Tabula Litterae

scribbled 21:54 3/12/2008

He isn’t that old. Bristles of unshaved rough prickle the hand his face rests on. Some gray hairs salt his head. When a smile splits his lips skin creases at the sides of his eyes like the flab-rolls of a g-string clad fatty.
He wishes a white beard hung to his belly-button, neatly trimmed into a conical form. A bald head around the top leaving a horseshoe of white hair…then he’d be respectable old. But he’s a handsome-enough 50-something to easily be mistaken for 40-something.
The pencil he’s holding taps the pad on his table -taps, but doesn’t write. No stimulus comes from the distance in which his eyes stare. An egg-yolk-orange sun twitters between trees like the cheery bird laughter abounding about branches. Some granite is put to yellow lined paper-pad -he jerks his hand away. Unsure, clamps teeth together. A submissive sigh then a consterned glare.
Damn the old codger who’ll dodder! The senile coot with his name, family, and past years of life forgotten. May he trip and die while wandering, a lost man in the neighborhood that’d been home for the last several decades. Drooling unawares…Damn his frumpy weak self. Shits so often his rocker may as well get plumbing. Looked up to by those who read his works but unable to even remember yesterday…
“Pop?” a teenager tall enough to seem a senior steps out of the screen door “anything come yet.” The bird-song’s sweet and comforting. Maybe man learned to use it as a measure of safety. When the birds sing sweetly the forest is deserted of dire predators but when they’re struck silent, canaries in a mine shaft, it’s time man use precaution. The youth sets his hand on his father’s shoulder, looking over he sees the pad has just a little scrawl. He admits what he hadn’t wanted to, “nothing‘s coming to me”. “It‘s alright pop. ” thinking better of it “I‘m sorry you‘re having this trouble. You were great though, people already remember you because of what you‘ve written.” Hopeful, needing this consolation to close off a path to tears he asks, “I was one of the greats, wasn‘t I Tim?” pale blue eyes pleading “yeah, pop. You are one of the greats.” Their shadows should be basketball players. Waste of height that they’re not. Father’s left hand embraces the son’s right. He may lose his mind; his father before him did. Yet the man sitting there now, is comfortable.