Got to see William Shatner recently at SiliCon, and he was a poem.

Willam Shatner at Ninety

SiliCon, 2021

He’s still got it.

Most of it, anyway.

Enough to draw long lines of excited adults 

to a vast blue room in a convention center 

in downtown San Jose at the end of August. 

So what if he can’t remember this word

or that and has to ask his fans for help,

standing on the edge of the stage in a 

light blue Hawaiian shirt, the fabric fighting

to rein his stomach in, his face red and wrinkled 

and shiny from the heat of the spotlight, 

but his eyes wide and bright as he holds forth

on historic techniques for making concrete

or the discovery of the trenches at the bottom 

of the ocean, his mind still going where no man

has gone, or doesn’t go often enough, in his opinion,

and that’s why he just started a podcast.

“What’s that, that round building in Rome?

he asks and “What do you call them, the gaps

at the bottom of the ocean?” His fans, the father 

from Berkeley, the gray-haired man in the Kirk shirt,

the woman declaring her mother’s love for him,

they shout the answers back, leaning forward 

in their seats to fill in his blanks.

Back to reading, learning, streeeetching the brain. Fun time but also a nervous time. Let’s go!

to this! Should be an interesting and engaging evening.

Got a lot of writing done this summer: new play drafted, a nice amount of poems, and some kid books drafted and redrafted. “Always a little further, pilgrim.”