Falling

 

It's surprisingly easy to let your mind

Begin to wander

While waiting at a supermarket checkout counter only to find

You've no folding money left to squander.

Why, then, is this prim register lady with her deep-lined face

Staring so hard at me, while arching a disapproving eyebrow?

I must extricate myself from this frightfulness with a particle of charm

Since I've plenty to do and little time to do it in this place,

But first I shall test my credit at the Plough and Harrow

And, if the publican's prickly enough I could well come to harm.

 

But I usually survive, as I did in that mouldering public house,

By sheer bravado.

Approaching the tall burnished bar with an air of the frivolous

And a flickering touch of inner derring-do,

I regarded his nibs across his bright forest of ale pumps

And called out: “A pint of Bass please, just put it on the slate.”

Glancing at the fake horse brasses I flashed him a mannered grin,

Though I knew it a close-run thing by the tingling goose bumps

On my skin, and how thin seemed the ice on which I often skate;

One day I'll be slumped, drunk in a corner, rattling a tin.

 

I took the next train out of town as soon as I could, frightened

By my 'retirement'

From work now so tedious when it should have been enlightened,

My destination, one where they don't ignore you, my only requirement.

The train itself was no train at all, a clacking bus inside,

With plastic-smelling plastics, electric hums and permanently closed windows;

I'd not been on one in years. “Next Stop Lincoln” declared the voice.

“Two miles down the track or Nebraska?” I mused right back, to cast aside

An insidious thought occurring: What if we truly are invisible to those

Who fear us for our age or wisdom: did we really have a choice?

 

Trouble with aging is it hurts more and more as it happens, forever busily

Setting up new

Hurdles on already melting tarmac to compound your misery,

And summers limpid with the heat of shimmering embers as Warming grew.

With wistful inclination I sought the falling echos of elder triumphs over fate:

Once more to bathe in self-congratulation, pride the enduring refuge of the fool.

Who gave one damn for my contributions? Some did, others not so much;

Books, verse, portraits and paper gongs along the office walls, all await

Another quiet nod of approbation, words of encouragement in Grammar School,

Each triggering bouts of tilting at windmills, few left long untouched.

 

Nursing a dearth of mountains to climb, I make do painting the garden's gate,

Play-acting to care.

While gaining strength from the truth that never is just as acceptable as late,

I promise my superego to match lessons learned with sound advice - if I dare.

It's one thing to assume that day follows day, uninterrupted in unbroken array,

Quite another to forget that jours quotidienne change at best by tiny increments,

Leaving scattered fragments of an authentic past as a windstorm's aftermath.

Far better to keep a note or two of the way things used to go in life's cabaret -

Hilarious as this will usually be to discomforted but participating temperaments -

Resulting in a measured turn onto finals, and a gently feathered final glide path.