When I get older,
nearing fifty – let’s stick to that number for this poem –
many of my friends – if I have the same ones then as I do now –
will be in their late thirties,
and I wonder
if I’ll slow down
and not be able to keep pace with younger legs,
and friends of my age,
if I were to extrapolate
how connections are now with people
spread across continents and time zones,
yes, those friends might be out of touch,
which is perhaps natural
because time, unlike gravity,
does not seem to flow at the same pace for everyone,
the clocks in all our faces
don’t stay in sync
and aging is relative.
Maybe when I’m fifty,
plus or minus one,
me and my partner
will have slowed down just enough
to still keep pace
with each other.