Jim's Retro Village Coffeehouse: One

The Older Bald Guy was enjoying a blend of Kenyan AA and Viennese Roast beans, with cream and brown sugar. He was reflecting on the song the Folksinger had just finished-a cover of Frank Sinatra’s "It Was A Very Good Year." Although the OBG was comfortable with old age, there were several aspects of becoming a "senior" that bothered him. The lifetime of knowledge and wisdom that seniors accumulate over their lifetimes is largely ignored as a resource by busier, younger people. Society in general seems to marginalise seniors, and place them out of the way, perhaps in an unconscious effort to ignore the relentless inevitability of aging. In return, it seemed to the OBG that seniors reinforced the marginalisation by being self-effacing, and by seeming to become almost invisible in their manner and actions.

An older couple had come into the Coffeehouse a few minutes ago, and were sitting quietly and unobtrusively at a corner table, their conversation, clothes, and body language doing nothing to attract attention. They were unnoticed by the Resident Radical, who was in the middle of a rant about how Medicare was not free to the people, and how the government made everyone think that it was a federal gift, when, in fact it was a capitalist tax grab. Neither were they in the thoughts of the Poet with the Beret, who was deep into a creative surge that the PwtB thought worthy of Kerouac.

The OBG looked down at the steno pad upon which he had been scribbling. This is what he had written:

Fog People

You often
almost see them
from the corner
of your eye.

You sense
a wisp of grey,
a floating,
e t h e r e a l
movement
that suddenly
d i s s o l v e s.

They drift
quietly,
gently,
on the edge
of our consciousness:
these pale,
these grey,
these haunting
people,
whom all,
but Time,
have forgotten.

If we chance
to pause,
to peer beyond
the d r i f t i n g veil,
we see,
within the shroud,
a preview of ourselves
tomorrow.