Old Man

What you have to know is I don't mean you menace.
What you have to know is I don't mean you harm.
What you have to know is I do what I do.
I do what I do just to do what I do.
It's what I am and only what I am - I mean you no menace.
I am [still] here, but you should have no hard feelings.
I myself have no hard feelings.
All my feelings are soft as the touch of my hand on your shoulder.
My attitude is gentle - as gentle as the whisper-spray of droplets from my breath into your ear.
Fear not - I am with you.
I am behind you.
I am inside you.
As I was and still am inside the bones of your father. And his mother before him and yet still with him.
For this is what I like.
Imagine.
Imagine a loom stretching across the plains, stretching through time; an infinity of width, for you all are the warp and I am the weft, twisting like a worm through the hanging of your bones and your muscles.
I like the striped continuity of generations, the interplay of senses. I wait to choose your son, to carry on the process.
But I am not bad.
There is no snick or snack of sharpened blades to whistle behind your ear.
No, I am not bad; just persistent.
You cannot outpace me. I have the perfectly-calibrated stamina of the old.
I wait at hidden bends and then I leap aboard.
I am a wise old tortoise and I need some help to carry my age-weighted shell.
You alone, you both, you all keep running, but I stay in the saddle, to reassure you of my intent.
Fear not, for I am with you always.
I do not hop from host to host; you are my children for ever and I shall never let you go.
I spend my lifetimes sweeping up successive generations.
I am homunculus. I am vulnerable. I am pilgrim. Do not fear the intensity of my quest. Do not fear the liver-spots on my hands. There are brains far more pock-marked than this skin I stretch out to you.
Do not fear the whisper.
We all need a little help to get along.
I am your push, you my pull.
We have a noble partnership, a working symbiosis.
Meat nuzzles meat. Age muzzles youth. Everything continues.
Please continue; but not in fear: give me your hand.