the last journey

The last Journey


Summer day, Fred at the old folks home, made
a couple of sandwiches put them in a plastic
bag and sat out on his lives journey on an electric
wheel chair. On the hard shoulder rolled didn’t
care where as long as it was out of town and far
away from the home. He travelled till the battery
fell flat, just before a steep downhill. Fred ate his
sandwiches and drank booze from a flask he had
hidden from the nurses, released the brakes and
the journey began. Faster and faster cars swerved
drivers cursed and Fred sang a bawdy song; eighty
he must have done, as old as himself, a bump in
the road, above traffic, into the hills, into the sky
and into a haze of disbelieve old Fred flew.