Hark ye old men

“Fly, envious time, till thou run out thy race, call on the lazy leaden-stepping hours…”

The sultry summer breeze caught a russet-colored handkerchief and swept it away from an old man’s grasp.

At first, he hesitated, eyes lingered at the cloth for a little longer, but then to an old man’s reluctance of heaving a feeble self off its modest haven, he let go of the mock thought.

“For it is just a cloth…” He said to himself and chuckled reverently.

Gradually, the wind let loose of the poor cloth and laid it gently on a twisted mango tree root, far west of the meadow. Oblivious to the man, the same gush of air made way for a crack of dirty white paint to be chipped off from his rocking chair’s scrawny rocker runners....and for that one instant, the wind had wordlessly proclaimed to the world how aged are the lives of both the chair and its tenant... . .

It was the time of year when verandas aren’t moss-strewn and is just the perfect place where to fritter away long and tropical afternoons without any remorse…a dwelling just perfect for an old man to make peace with nature and to catch the last kiss of the day. . . .

He was a man of seventy seven summers and of wayward bearing. He was a man who, by a wonderful twist of faith, was at last casting his careful breathing of unspoiled air in a kind of place he had been dreaming to own ever since he was twenty five—when he was still full of boyish fervor and farming spirit. And a farmhouse he did get, though already at the near dusk of his living years, and with the spirit no more.

He was a man of satisfaction. Though he had a life far, far from perfection, it never occurred to him to disown it. Instead, he took pride of the thorny paths he had trampled on—though how it marred him so deeply—when he could have taken the easy course through Route Heav’n. He fell off the deepest cliff of the South that brought him agonizing years in bed that dragged on like forever. It was a crucial existence when he gambled his riches just to grab hold of counterfeited pleasures that at the end of the day gave him no good.

He woke up one day stripped off with handsome women and dainty boots and all the earthly riches he used to own. Yet he slowly accepted his defeat and marked that faithful day no other than a beginning of his real life. He was born again. And gladly did he embrace an unsullied and humble existence.

Sitting idly on his rocking chair, he allowed his eyes to ramble across the wide rice field. He took notice of his old friend Landoy, and was delighted by the fact that his carabao is relishing the cooling-effect that its mud-soaked hide is offering itself. And his eyes, once again, caught the handkerchief, not knowing that it was the last thing in this world that he would be letting go.