! O L D F A R T H O O D Poem by Michael Shepherd

No, of course I don’t…
I mean, who’d want to be
a mere two scornful words
in a stand-up comic’s
patronising patter…

‘The other day, at the ticket office,
there was this old fart in front of me…’

…just you wait, young man,
until your sciatica, arthritis and rheumatism
feel the cold and wet today; your
toupée (always good for a visual laugh)
has blown off, your dentures have
just cracked into a plastic cleft palate,
the battery’s just gone in your hearing aid,
and you left your walking stick
by your seat in the bus or tube in panic
when you couldn’t find that place
no longer there, where you used
to spend a penny…
and you’re hoping to clear up
with that immigrant ticket clerk
(not the best job for him, surely?)
which of the wildly variant twelve fare systems would apply
to the ticket to visit your married daughter, where
you might or might not stay the night…

no of course I don’t…
but the camera, which never lies,
has lost patience with me..
its expensive self-focus system
registers ‘old fart’ – quite possibly
uses some built-in stock image…

and even if some prestigious
occasion requires a photo credit
and one goes to a ‘studio photographer’
of ever-increasing price,
hoping they’ll catch some firmness
of a feature, some line of wise concern,
an eye betokening a life well lived,
some profile signifying gravitas…

but no…often now,
I see my face above some article
in an in-flight or a waiting-room magazine,
read it in self-congratulation or self-disdain,
think, I don’t remember writing that…
then realise, it’s by some other
identical old fart, grinning vacantly,
ingratiatingly, shapeless of any feature,
devoid of any mystery of shadow,
hoping that the editor
will remember these wise words of age..

but no… so here’s
one old fart
issuing another…