<html><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body dir="auto"><div dir="ltr"><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="" style="font-style: normal;">Memories and Plans<o:p class=""></o:p></span></p><div><span style="font-style: normal;"><span class=""> </span><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></span></div><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="" style="font-style: normal;">David, who will be eighty <o:p class=""></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="" style="font-style: normal;">On his next birthday tells me<o:p class=""></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="" style="font-style: normal;">“It’s so odd that now I have<o:p class=""></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="" style="font-style: normal;">More memories than plans.”<o:p class=""></o:p></span></p><div><span style="font-style: normal;"><span class=""> </span><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></span></div><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="" style="font-style: normal;">As I walk Salzburg’s cobbled streets<o:p class=""></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="" style="font-style: normal;">Now for the fourth time<o:p class=""></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="" style="font-style: normal;">In three decades, I live<o:p class=""></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="" style="font-style: normal;">My remembrances. <o:p class=""></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="" style="font-style: normal;">So sweet this city’s familiarity<o:p class=""></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="" style="font-style: normal;">With its centuries stacked<o:p class=""></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="" style="font-style: normal;">Against my decades of history here. <o:p class=""></o:p></span></p><div><span style="font-style: normal;"><span class=""> </span><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></span></div><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="" style="font-style: normal;">On the train to Paris,<o:p class=""></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="" style="font-style: normal;">A man deluded by his youth<o:p class=""></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="" style="font-style: normal;">And drowning in testosterone<o:p class=""></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="" style="font-style: normal;">Flirts foolishly for the two young women<o:p class=""></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="" style="font-style: normal;">Seated opposite him, singing<o:p class=""></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="" style="font-style: normal;">His own praises and plans<o:p class=""></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="" style="font-style: normal;">A peacock with feathers fanned<o:p class=""></o:p></span></p><div><span style="font-style: normal;"><span class=""> </span><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></span></div><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="" style="font-style: normal;">He stacks his adventurous future<o:p class=""></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="" style="font-style: normal;">Against the staid and stale lives<o:p class=""></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="" style="font-style: normal;">Of the old. His imaged exciting<o:p class=""></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="" style="font-style: normal;">Rich days to come so<o:p class=""></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="" style="font-style: normal;">Significant to the quiet, boring<o:p class=""></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="" style="font-style: normal;">Days of the elderly. Still lack<o:p class=""></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="" style="font-style: normal;">Of experience lies to him, tells him<o:p class=""></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="" style="font-style: normal;">His imagined life matters more <o:p class=""></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="" style="font-style: normal;">Than lives lived. Two men<o:p class=""></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="" style="font-style: normal;">Seated opposite him<o:p class=""></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="" style="font-style: normal;">Ask what he means when he refers <o:p class=""></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="" style="font-style: normal;">To old. He replies “forty.” <o:p class=""></o:p></span></p><div><span style="font-style: normal;"><span class=""> </span><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></span></div><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="" style="font-style: normal;">We three decades beyond old<o:p class=""></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="" style="font-style: normal;">Speed through Catalunya<o:p class=""></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="" style="font-style: normal;">And Languedoc smiling. <o:p class=""></o:p></span></p><div><span style="font-style: normal;"><span class=""> </span><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></span></div><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="" style="font-style: normal;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>- Rebecca del Rio<o:p class=""></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-style: normal;"><br></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="" style="font-family: "American Typewriter", serif;"> <o:p class=""></o:p></span></p><div><span class="" style="font-family: "American Typewriter", serif;"><br></span></div></div></body></html>