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Reclusive, old, he sits alone.
Some think the multi-coloured chains
dependent on his walls must mock
and amplify his solitude.

“How sad,” they say, “with no-one there,
no kith nor kin to cook or call
to comfort his declining years.”

They cannot know how little he
deplores his solitary state,
alone but never lonely, lets
contentment, all pervading, make
his heart a plenitude of peace.

No friends? Between the covers of
his books he has a multitude,
and can with Pickwick laugh – rejoice
at Scrooge’s reformation – share
upon the Grand Trunk Road with Kim
the sights and sounds of distant Hind –
on Devon’s moorland walk at will
accompanied by Lorna Doone –
from fiction’s cast invite the best,
say Don Quixote, Holmes, or Jeeves,
to pass the carefree Christmas hours.

Untroubled by the ghosts from bygone days,
he counts his blessings, thanking God –
as happy as a man can be
whose age is three and seventy.

T. C. Hudson 1983.

© T. C. Hudson.

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