Greybeard, or The Piggyback

This is what I've noticed

when I drive:

No one’s on the street

to thwack a Dunlop

with a stick.

Of course, I’m so

antediluvian,

everyone called out horse

instead of car.

Cried plague instead of

cooties.

Ring-around-the-mammoth.

I haven’t seen a piggy-

back for nearly

thirty years. A bygone

mode of movement. Kids

now slouch bewitched—

by some Samsung’s

gravité.

I don’t get out much anymore.

Housebound by my hobble.

The rotary’s lost its curls.

A luddite stretching cord

as if it’s time.

Maybe folks still stop &

stoop, offer one on the roadway

to Nantucket. Maybe the burden

of the weight is just as airy as

those heady days of love,

the strati with their

arms about our shoulders,

clouds that have no

wings and yet they fly.

Andreas Gripp

March 19, 2026

RF Photo