When I’m sixty-five next month.

Things will be ending. (Bending down quickly. Running up stairs.)

And things will be beginning.

New home. New life.

New video camera. New books. New dog.

Things will continue. Reading my books. Loving my wife.

Living with donkeys, dogs, cats and chickens. Walking with dogs.

Are you taking them with you, they ask me all the time?

Yes, I say, why would I leave them behind?

I am going to my new home, a farm, not a nursing home.

Sex in my life, food for my spirit. I lived without it, never again.

How do I know when I’m sixty-five?

Companies selling Medicare.

Patronizing articles in the AARP Magazine. (They don’t let you cancel.)

Phony discounts for things I don’t need, while people in need get nothing.

They try and sell me nothing but death, diapers,  tests and pills. And they

try and sell me that all the time.

I need a strategy for getting up off the ground sometimes.

Pharmaceutical companies want me to have a friendly chat with my doctor,

but I don’t know any friendly doctors.

People lift things for me. Talk to me about their health.

Want to know about mine.

Is it the end of something? Or another beginning?

Doesn’t it suck to get older, they ask me?

No, I tell them. My life does not suck, it used to suck,

when I was young,

and it will never suck again.

That is a choice,

not a number.

Both, I think, both, a beginning, an end.

I am happy to be 65.

I am just learning how to write.

I am just learning how to take photos.

I am just learning how to teach.

I am just learning how to encourage.

I am just learning how to love. And be loved.

I am just learning about boundaries.

I am much better being

older than being younger.

Watch me grow. Watch me live.

At 65.