Aiming at Spry

I hear the cold hard scrap of the shovel on concrete, the old man pausing amide the fog of his breath, asking how long he will be up to it, how many more winters will he muster the strength to move the bones inside his skin. Or maybe the strength of mind will go first, the mechanics of shoveling dropping away, blurring like eyesight, the fog of breath becoming the ever present fog of mind. How it turns out is all mystery. Age has taught him that. He intends to be one of those spry old codgers, sharp as a tack, as the say. He laughs at that, thinking maybe sharp as a blunt nail? Spry, anyway, one of those old guys with a walking stick you meet on the trail whose slow steady pace can go all day, but he doesn’t because he’s finally learned reaching the destination means the journey’s over and it’s the journey that got him up in the first place, and the end will come soon enough.