I told you this already
when I was sixty-two
but this year
while I’m sixty-three
I plan to learn to sing
“When I’m Sixty-Four”
because I believe
I should sing it
all year long
to everyone
who loves me.
Late at night
I learn the lyrics
on my laptop
the Beatles’ voices
in the quiet living room
my impish delight
breaking through
my exhaustion.
I hope every time
I sing it
I will feel
just like this.
The mockingbird I hear here
mimics different birds
than my desert mockingbird
who sang for me when he was young
practicing his calls
in the middle of the summer nights
The mockingbird here
sings outside the opened louvers
just like at home
but not
And I love hearing him
each time
grateful
even if he wakes up longing in me
for my little home
and my mockingbird
sleeping
underneath the desert stars.
The first time I was blasted open by wilderness was when I drove through the northern state of Baja California. The winding two-lane highway with no shoulder, no evidence of humankind anywhere except the road, only open undulating desert and scrub brush in every direction. No dwellings, no telephone poles, no water until the cats and I rounded a bend and saw the Sea of Cortez.
Wednesdays I drive to Trader Joe’s
park on the side street
tall trees
old inviting houses
today a woman
watering her yard
white screen door propped open
I sip my hot yerba maté
sing snatches of
“Our House”
Mourning dove
mockingbird
sit on wires
across the way
listening
I drink my tea
breathe
cry grateful tears.
I hear the loud heater
down the hall
and think of my little home
and silence in the middle of the night
especially in winter
with no air conditioners
only cold air
through the open louvers
and the cry of the barn owl
and years ago, the small, warm weights
of my two cats
tucked against me
in the quiet night.
I dream Julia Roberts and I
on a rooftop
She has a cut lip
and hair pulled back into a small messy knot
There is city around us
maybe near the sea
and we visit there more than once
gaze across the rooftops at dusk
She has trauma, too, something to do
with a dream she wanted to fund
in Syria or Ruanda
and crazed pushback on social media
And somehow we are close
comforted by each other
Our lives both hard just now
but meeting
and being met
easy together
like old friends
like decades
like no secrets
like no hiding at all.
In my joy class we sing “With a Little Help from My Friends,” all of us swaying and clapping together in our little Zoom boxes. After, I have Alexa play it for me again and again until I memorize all the words. I pick “When I’m 64” to learn next because I think I should sing it throughout the coming year while I’m 63. Late at night I sit in the living room, heater and ice-maker noises behind me, solar Christmas lights on the succulents outside the window, headlights on the 210 moving like water in the distance between the black curves of the foothills. My eyes close while I type, and I jerk awake more than once, but when I finish my work, I look for the song. I find the music with the lyrics, and I play it on my laptop with the volume turned way down. “Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I’m sixty-four?” My knees bounce as my feet move, and I sing along, delighted with the music and the words, the minds and hearts that made them. I am lifted out of my limited self in the quiet night, unhindered, even happy, spread out like the valley to the west, silent now in the late dark.
No Holds Barred 