Only as Old

"Frail bones predict what fragile minds can't detect,"
He trailed off slowly, "And my bones are achin'."
The air around me hung low and depressed,
Sticking to the back of my throat like a stormy syrup
I'd tried to swallow down.

I peered out the kitchen window
And caught an inklet of patched-over-grey sky;
I wondered what was in store for the day.

Impartial to the gloom outside, we stepped out onto the back porch;
Grandpa wobbled out with his cane in hand and we waited.
In the hushed stillness the trees traded birds—
Robins, swallows, whippoorwills, and cardinals.
If you squinted hard enough at the sullen shrubbery,
You could spot the caterpillar creeping to the underside of the leaf.

That's when I looked at Grandpa,
And saw through his eyes nature receding
At his prescience of a storm.

"Grandpa, how do you always know?"
He chuckled and simply said: "The world tells me."
It was left at that, but years later I have found
That the world is only as old as the person to whom you speak.

Grandpa left me on that porch that day, with myself and the rousing thunder;
And I watched as the world around me grew younger.