1
Numbers are nice but words are wonderful
Filling us with wonder ‘til we overflow
As kids, my brother Willy and I
Spent many Lodi summer nights
Sleeping outside in our backyard
Among the stars and almond trees.
Those were the days before light pollution
Washed out the night sky.
Laying there we looked up into the field of stars
So bright and deep, sometimes it felt
As if we were falling into them.
Now as then, my head was filled
With science fiction dreams:
I wanted to go there, out to the stars.
The closest star, I knew, was Proxima Centauri:
Red dwarf star, a bit more than 4 light years away,
About 40 trillion kilometres.
By now I’ve taken seventy trips
On planet Terra around our local star,
At more than 100,000 kilometres per hour.
If you do the math (which I did)
That’s almost 66 billion kilometres, a lot.
But still only about a 600th of the distance
to Proxima Centauri.
To get there at this rate, I must accept,
Would take 600 of these lifetimes,
more than 40,000 years,
The amount of time since people first painted caves.
And if I got there, what I’d find, I now know,
Would be one possibly habitable planet,
Hugging its star, tidally locked and shocked
By random stellar flares.
I now wonder:
Why would I want to go there?
2
I’ve always felt lucky to have been born
in such a round numbered year as 1950.
But even so, when I was a kid,
in the dangerous ‘50’s and ‘60’s
I certainly didn’t think I’d make it to the age of 70:
If nuclear Armageddon didn’t get us first,
then pollution would.
Of course, each of these might still get us.
But here we are:
We have somehow muddled through.
In my hypervigilance I’ve consistently
Pessimised our future, sold us short;
I’ve underestimated us, me and my fellow humans:
Our folly is not complete
But balanced at times by wisdom;
So far, it’s not been great,
But it has been enough to keep us going.
I see now, after years of studying anxiety
In myself and my clients:
My vision of darkness and doom
has always been a search for light
3
So help me celebrate 70 years, and
The good we’ve done together,
The people we’ve helped:
The children, students, clients, patients.
The light we’ve shined in the darkness,
Dispelling misery, hatred, despair
(And not just ours).
Our drifting apart, our reconnecting,
The times of crisis, injury and recovery,
The connections made,
The love we’ve found, and made, and gave,
The happiness, the good-natured jokes,
The stories told and heard, and told again.
The passing from one generation to the next:
What our parents, and grandparents, gave us,
What we in turn have given
To our children and grandchildren.
And celebrate the space we’ve been given
to be ourselves.
I know we could do better
But we are striving to give this space
To those who follow us.
So let us celebrate these things and more.
Friends, family, universe: Thank you.
