ON TURNING 63

Like one of those old 78RPM records

Spinning ‘round the turntable;

The needle chasing the grooves

As their diameter diminishes,

Pulling the sound out of them-

Not the “real” sound, exactly,

But a reasonable facsimile thereof,

Close enough, but scratchy,

The sound popping,

And hard to understand sometimes.

If you remember watching,

The record traveled at the same speed,

All the way through to the end.

But it seemed as you looked on,

As you approached those final chords,

The arm holding the needle

Seemed to pick up speed

The closer it came.

The speed was the same,

But there was less record to travel,

So it looked faster.

When I was a kid,

I thought everything ran slow.

“Won’t my birthday ever come?”

“How many more days before Christmas?”

I just couldn’t wait. But wait I had to…

Because time can’t be hurried,

As much as little boys might want it to.

The speed was set long ago,

And there’s no button on life

That allows us to change speeds.

Funny thing is,

The longer your record plays,

The quicker it seems to go

As it inevitably spins

To its conclusion.

The years seem like months,

The months, days, the days minutes,

And the minutes? Forget about it!

Just as time won’t speed up

For young whippersnappers,

There’s no way us old farts

Can make it slow down.

Today I started running at 63 RPM,

And already I’m having a hard time

Catching my breath. Things get ahead of me,

And there’s precious little time

To look back.

Since this is the first time

My record has been played,

Nobody has heard how long

The last movement will be,

Or what the end will sound like.

I won’t even know when I come to it,

All I know is it’s coming:

Faster and faster, as I wait

For the new record, new music

That will begin playing

When this one finally stops.

-Chip Bergeron

August 16, 2011