Fading Away

Fading Away
By: Richard David Briggs
Dedicated to: Our Forgotten!
 
Seek safety from crushing city stress,
Among sweet smells of market square,
Sip coffee at some quiet café terrace.
God sees me! Then, I remain silent!
A mirror window, such a lethal glass!
Reflect how others choose to see me!
Me, a renowned university professor,
Am shocked at my newly withered me!
God makes me to see, yet still I deny.                                                Onlookers stand up take in a full view.
Oh no! I’m a greyish decayed old fool!                                                       With balding head, salt-peppered hair,
With stiffened briskly frosty eyebrows
Wrinkles, a deeply etched forehead;
Stretched lines on sides of my mouth,
Spider-webs and with a turkey-throat,
Stomach, spongy-round, fallen down;
Backbone spinal discs so squeezed;
Polk -a-dotted with brown-age spots!
Oh God! I look away in utter disgust!
"Lord, help me to find another table!"
I titter- totter, rather shaky than walk,
Bulging blue-vein legs slow me down.
Customers’ faces turn away from me,
Have I some communicable disease?
Ah how teenagers stare, scoff, mock!
My heart pierced, I find shady refuge!
My vision weak, I forget my glasses;
Ask waiter about, ‘Special of the Day’                                                           Know those eyes from times before;
Thinks I’m an ‘Alzheimer on the loose!’
Uh maybe I am! … Can’t remember!
Ah! How life’ is now a fading memory!
Daily, I hear so many garbled sounds,
Embarrassed, order My Mystery-Meal!                                                          Spot two tourists, in soap-opera land,
I tighten, and crock, rather than speak,
Am totally rejected, dejected, I leave!                                                        Aged! The young make me fade away!