-Look at Him -
He sits on his front porch in a rocking chair - not even rocking. As he sits, is he even aware that the world is rushing by? It certainly ignores him, not a wave nor a smile. Hit sits minute by minute, hour by hour, day in, day out - not even rocking.
-Look at Him-
His face is creased with the inevitable wrinkles of aging. But there is more, so much more. His face is lined from living. His eyes reflect a life already lived. An involuntary tear slips unnoticed from his eye. Don’t you want to reach out and gently brush it away? It stops in a wrinkle. There are so many of them.
-Look at Him-
Will he speak? His lips are tightly set. He has nothing to say to day. If he should speak, it would be of when he stood straight and tall, with youthful vigor and manly pride. But now he says nothing. His lips are tightly set.
-Look at Him-
His back is bent; his head bobbles; his chest is concave. He will never stand erect again. His movements are slow exaggerated, uncontrollable like an infant’s. He carries the weight of a lifetime. His back is bent.
-Look at Him-
His hands resemble crinkled tissue paper stretched over a network of bones. Never have his fingers, crooked though they may be, appeared so long. Serenity rest in those hands folded in his lap. They have been stilled by time.
-Look at Him-
Legs that must support him seem so fragile now. The once well fitting slacks now hang, Icabod style, over his once agile legs. His shoes are left untied, unless another stoops to tie them for him. A cane rests nearby as a constant reminder that he can no longer walk on his own two legs.
-Look at Him-
Other cultures; other ages considered men such as he, wise. Their long periods of silence and stillness were viewed as meditation. They were revered for having outlasted the fierce struggle of living. Surely, in their living, they had met God, face to face.
-Look at Him-
But, our culture shuns him. If we visit, we visit only out of a sense of duty or guilt. He makes us uncomfortable. How can he sit so still when we must run in such hectic frenzy? He is even unaware of the pain that his presence causes us. He won’t even rock in his rocking chair.
-Look at Him-
Smile at him. Really and truly smile. Smile with all your being. Touch him, physically touch him, not out of pity, but as one human being reaching out to another.
-Look at him-
There, in his face, is a faint flicker of a smile in return. It’s gone, quicker than it came. But, in that fleeting moment, soul touched soul.
-Look at him-
1975
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