Poverty: In Total Poverty of Mind

In total poverty of mind, the old man sits by the battered door,
Seemingly confused by the reality of the present,
While locked into some needless torments from the past.
In his mind, he is alone, completely consumed by former passions
Now long gone in time, but not yet fully erased from his memory,
Or from the slowly, shattering depths of his fragile mind.
Startled by his own racing thoughts, in a sudden panic,
He quickly jumps to his feet, almost falling over.
He appears to climb a non-existent stairwell,
Still vividly fixed in his lost and wandering imagination.
A while later, reaching into a back pocket for a wallet that is not there,
He signals to his former barber to keep the change, again.
His right hand reaches up to touch the bristles of the new haircut,
Forever etched into the recesses of his fading mind.
"Who are you? I don't know you! I want to go home!"
He cries out to someone, but now less frequently every day.
In reality, he is at home, but in his increasingly shallow mind,
Home is forever somewhere else, somewhere he has been in the past,
While in truth, perhaps he may never truly know home again.
Suddenly, he senses the dawn, alert to the sounds of the cheeping robins.
Quietly, he opens the door and wanders out into the quiet, dark street,
But now one which is no longer really familiar to him.
He tugs on the imaginary leash of his long deceased dog.
He takes a few more steps and then says, "Let's go home now, old scout,"
Nearby, the neighbors are watching and listening to him talk to his dog.
"Good dog," they hear the old man say, as he turns and heads back towards his home.
Entering the house, he sits back down in the rickety chair by the door,
As if waiting for the next time his waiting dog wants to go out.
Smiling vaguely, he stares off into space towards some abstract object,
Some figment of his mind that we may never see.
Maybe this is some place where life has kept his truncated mind tethered,
'No,' he cries out as he finally gives in to despair
And closes his eyes, as if no one else is in his world
And no one is present to actually care, even if they did dwell there.
The happy child in him, it seems, was never truly there
And neither is he there now, or so it might seem,
While love still hovers, awake in the old man's soul,
Never to depart, even in his total poverty of mind.

An elderly man lives the later years of his life in his own world, one not that is real to others.