Birthday poem

On Turning Sixty-One

Fitzgerald’s last line,

longing rendered in

fourteen words, ode to

inevitability uttered

in any tongue. “So we beat

on” aching,

“boats against the current”

 our urgent

she bu de!, she bu de!/

I can’t bear

           

to let go!, “borne back”

by music

in the Latin,

de mihi tempus/

give me more

time, echoing

“ceaselessly

into the past.”