Epochal Tales

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.