Most days, on my way to the bar or grocery shop, I walk past an old man who sits in the shade of an oak, on a creaky sofa that has lost its place in the lounge. I usually stop and talk to him, he can't remember me from one day to the next, tells me the same story about his parents, and where he grew up; Portugal of yore. He isn't here today, only the mantle, he wraps around himself when there is a chill in the air, is flung on the old sofa; a zephyr whispers that he will not be back. 'Will I be that old? I ask the waning sun. I sit on a sofa on the terrace, a blanket wrapped around my shoulders, scan the sky, in the vale where I live and my parents too lived, we wait for September rain.
