Birthday Reminder to Myself:

August 23, 2005

Birthday

Time to grow old;
Not to take in sail and be safe and temperate, But drive the hull harder, drive the bows under.
Time to grow hard
And solitary: to a man past fifty the hot-eyed
Girls are still beautiful, but he is not.
Time to grow passionate.
Girls that take off their clothes, and the naked truth,
Have a quality in common: both are accessible.
Time to despise
Peace: that's under the prow: peace is an ocean
To conquer and traverse, and at last drown in.
Time who half wasted
The summer trade-wind should whistle for winter tempest,
And the tall blind cliffs of Terra Incognita.

--Robinson Jeffers