She may walk through crowds
unseen
An advantage of her age
poking through products  
at her own distracted speed
Feeling fruit or sniffing soap
Reading labels
fine print through two pair of glasses
turning slightly
hoping no one sees...
how gone it's getting....

She may lean on cart at check-out
just shy of your usual...
Old
who ask for double bags
Nope, she will not slow the line that way
Remembering work
assesses pain
shifting weight to other leg
to spare an aching knee

Not one for counting desperate change
Not arguing every item on receipt
Not fumbling coupons
nor writing checks

...will not slow the line...

reluctant to let go of youth
Remembering exhaustion's day
she will not slow the line that way--
Fiddles with smart phone
(Yes, she knows how!)
to pass the time
She fumbles through her purse--
God only knows
what “old folks” look for
Probably glasses, tissues, gum,
or
"Where the hell's my keys!"

Stopping by a news rack
on the way out
Is she waiting for a cab?
Who cares!
Outta way, she stops to read
The New York Times, WaPo, Journal
Thee chapters of a novel
Outside their pay-walls
The mind beneath the woolen cap
is at it
grazing once again, for free
Where she often likes to feed--
her curiosity
No one sees her watching
from the inside out
and the corner of her eye

But what to do about that cat litter?
or ½ and ½
on highest shelves?
she simply cannot reach....

Always some tall good-lookin' guy around
to flatter
his size
looking for dog kibble, “big game snacks” or beer

She plays
the old lady card so well
...and somehow
gets what she needs

Mind, like a deciduous forest
has lost all its foliage,
all leaves torn away
by the autumnal blasts

The brain where great schemes were concocted
is now an abyss where spiders sway
It is bare – dismally barren
of all memories – sweet and sour
Like a kite afloat in the boundless sky
moving nowhere, but as the wind directs,
cut out from the past, turned from the present
with the future yet to surge from the abyss
or like serpents intertwining,    
hissing in turmoil within the brain,
unable to sense the gusty blast,
or hear the whispering air,
dead to sounds that disturb,
deaf to songs that soothe,
like a phantom he moves weird,
drifting far away
to a space and time impenetrable  
with nothing to make the mind agog
or depress it to let out a sigh.

Loitering on roads without hurrying feet
with no bliss coming on the way
to run or hasten to embrace
or fear to be missed sore
passing through dark labyrinthine tunnels
forever barred with no exit
churned in oblivion, oblivious of all,
he remains a spectral facsimile
of his onetime self
plummeting into a black hole

The pulse of a heart beat
is all that keeps him alive,  
all else is dead…… !  
with dreary nights ahead
that shall not know another morrow