The wrong comparison (on reading Maryann Corbett’s biographical note)

A second degree in Eighty One:
she might be 2 or 3 days
older than me.
                     Did I say days?
In the old Celtic reckoning.
With age years have become like days.

I remember the old legend
of Rip van Winkle, he falls asleep,
at once his twenty winks become
as many years long: wasted years.

Or not wasted, perhaps just spent
beyond the fellow’s cognisance,
in latent recognition.