He is an old man, they say
But a free spirit in himself

Like a bird that longs to fly from a cage that bears not a lock
It is the will of man, so cold yet unshaken
For it is not the wind that could sway him or the earth when it moved
It was just a heart,  beating, and a soul, untaken
And the air of the bygone era, never to come back.

Many a stories he tells, warming the tales by his golden hearth
With a crinkle on his cheek and not a wrinkle on his face
And the crackle of dark wood, turning a shade lighter with every cackle
The smoke turned away like time and flown to places he yearned to be
For who is he then if not what the tales show him to be?

He’d say he’d seen many faces, not of people but of time as it passed
The sands blowing away each grain as he tried for not all to be past
Yet with great strength, it is from that which he built it all
Not a grain left out nor a drop unused, as he restructured what was lost with his palms
And then he moved on, to begin anew, to wake after a deep slumber,
The words of a creator and the thoughts of a philosopher

His valour, stronger than a stone and his eyes, darker than a raven
His deeds, as immortal as a monument, etched upon the glass of time
His words, flowing like a stream  of river, with a gush that could erode and form
But yet sometimes he’d wander off into a world of pure and wild
And as this nascent cogitation flourished, it is in them where bit by bit he found
The man he truly was and the free spirit by which he is bound

For there may be shackles of time and restrictions of thought imposed
But what cannot be denied to a man is his spirit and his soul
For this man continues to carry forward the tale he once began
Doling out a part of himself in every prose, word and line
Pearls of wisdom from a wiser man who has now turned senile

Yes, he is an old man, they say
But truly a free spirit in himself.