A Merry Old Soul Was He.

The only feature more distracting
than the gray tufts of hair
protruding from George's massive ears
were the wiry caterpillars above
his dark, sunken eyes.
With every coming year he shrunk
another inch and his cigarette-weakened voice
became more and more faint.
I'd have to step closer and closer
to the quietly rotting Italian man who lived
alone in a trailer in the neighbor's back yard
in order to hear whatever trivial question
the seventy-something-year-old man
had for a kid trying to play by himself
in his father's lonely yard.
Sometimes my parents, when they still
lived together and made decisions that way
would send me to his tin-sheathed time capsule of an abode
on a Saturday morning to watch television
on his tobacco-stained couch. Had they needed
a babysitter they would've called one of the cute
little ponytailed teenagers in the neighborhood;
even at that naive age I knew that my presence
at George's place was more for his benefit
than my own, though it didn't bother me
enough to protest the directive and risk being
banned from playing Nintendo for a week.
There was always some form of candy in a bowl
on his coffee table and he let me pick which programs
we watched. When he'd had his fill of company
I'd be dismissed graciously like a wife departing
from an inmate's conjugal visit. The favor was repaid
one time when my elementary school was hosting
some function for its students and their grandfathers in a
blessed pre-politically correct era that conveniently denied
the fact that this may've caused problems for those
with deceased or AWOL patriarchs. Good ol' George
was happy to fill in for the occasion. He wore a bowtie
that probably hadn't seen the light of day since
his wife was still alive and wouldn't do so again.
I'm not sure what ever happened to the man
though I assume he's happily underground with his beloved.
If by some chance I met him again in that driveway
between my father's home and his I wouldn't know
how to answer any of the questions that by now
would be inaudible to the human ear
and equally irrelevant.
George, you should've quit sooner--
the cigarettes, I mean.




Currently reading:
"Demian" by Hermann Hesse.