Reflections On The Bus & Outside The Café

The old woman on the bus with the nasty cough
reminds me that I too am mortal...
...as if I needed reminding...

One day I will be old, perhaps...
...stooped, heavily wrinkled...
...carrying one final illness inside...

I tell myself 'So enjoy this sunny day'...
and the buildings of London (strange secretive Gothic house glimpsed as the bus glides past)
and the pretty girls
and the shadows trees drop on pavements
and the way light illuminates the corner of a block on that housing estate...

Next stop, the Royal Free hospital...
...place of pain & salvation...
...recovery & resignation...
...tragic visions of a loved-one in bed there...so vulnerable...

An old man with a heavily tattooed hand sits nearby...
...respectably dressed, though shabby...
...still rebelling, perhaps, as he did back when the needle bit
into his skin so very long ago...illustrating his youth forever...
...then he was strong, fit & full of himself, with a long future
full of bars and birds and beer and bouts of merriment with the boys...
...now his sits, silent, seeing his End, perhaps, not so far away...

We're all on the bus...
all unknowable going about our daily lives...
...the voices inside...
...glances aimed at strangers...
...brief contact - 'I'm sorry'...
...and to pass time I try to read the signs...
...the physogs & sartorial style...
...am I alone, I wonder, in concocting life stories for strangers?

Outside the café, a tanned girl in Lycra leggings...
training for what?
For Life, of course.
One needs to be fit for Life.
She makes call -
'Are you not at home?'
Another call - no answer.
She taps the keys...
texting, updating her Facebook status, tweeting, perhaps...
...it's essential that Followers & friends know what's going on...
...thoughts contrived especially for broadcast formulated on a regular basis...
...and I, in my old-fashioned way, scribble mine onto paper with a pen...