old age means having time to notice every wildflower — chicory, fleabane bladder campion, mullein & milkweed tooth- & mother- & mug- & st-john’s- wort, plus others, each with a name I could aim to learn — a green spire’s yellow blossoms, its new name already gone, I know now I forget my younger mind ebbs, memories old & new, this trick or that, the cats don’t mind, they don’t know things too for example, why I don’t want my flesh kneaded by outstretched claws pressure, puncture, frisson of pain passage through nothingness to joy