Slackwater 

I love being old in this world, where baby mussels and crabs  
make necklaces on the sand. You have to take off jewelry if you  
are a stage manager, which I was in my twenties, or if you fly  
on a trapeze. My daughter gave me trapeze lessons for my sixtieth birthday.  
At seventy, I ziplined over the Hawaiian canopy with my youngest sister.  
I like being the oldest. Piping plover, staring out to sea as if seeing the invisible,  
guard their unhatched. Mine have hatched and had their own babies.  
The four-year-old can already body board on white water. I got to do that  
once in Bali. The Balinese rode flower-festooned elephants in a circle  
around one long row of teenagers who had their canine teeth sawed. My friend  
was angry with me for wandering off during the ceremony. We didn’t know  
her brain was already lacy, fragile. I am old and can remember almost everything.  
But I will never be able to name everything: Neap tide. Dame’s rocket.  
Bentgrass. Silica. Gilt-head Bream. Round-leaved Boneset. The Folly Tree  
Arboretum has a clone of a clone of the sycamore tree Hippocrates sat under  
to teach. Hippocrates lived for ninety years. My father, also a physician,  
lived until eighty-eight. Maybe I am alive because of both men. You walk  
through a forest of history at Folly Tree. Offspring of Hibakujumoku,  
the gingko that survived Hiroshima. My master’s thesis was on Frank  
Oppenheimer, Robert’s brother. Maybe I’m alive because of both brothers.  
You hike through red maple and beech to reach the George Cain Memorial.  
A firefighter who died on 9/11, he didn’t get to love being old. Maybe  
I’ll say I’m ninety-one, so hiking eight miles sounds more impressive. Hippocrates  
said diet, rest, and massage were essential. The Yellow Emperor’s Classic Book  
of Internal Medicine, written five thousand years ago, mentions massage.  
Brooke Astor had massages until she was one hundred, despite her brittle bones.  
My hip bones are as porous as sandstone, but I’ll have a massage every day.  
Here on the continent’s edge, I can still climb a tall white chair as if guarding  
an unborn planet. I love being old in this world, where death is like flying. 

ROBIN DELLABOUGH

Robin Dellabough is a poet and writer with a master’s degree from UC Berkeley Journalism School. Double Helix (2022) is her debut collection and includes a Pushcart Prize–nominated poem. Recent poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Rattle, Gyroscope, Yellow Arrow, Stoneboat, Halfway down the Stairs, Mom Egg Review, Blue Unicorn, Negative Capability, and other publications and anthologies.