Friday, May 27, 2005

Gray Man

On the flat, hot sandy plot
designated two to five,
I picnicked with a man
not half my size.

And a gray man carefully traced the silver
mesh outline of the park. Patriot buttons
and a U.S. flag studded the band of his pork pie
hat. I meant to say hello, but he never met our eyes.
He stared past everything, at a lonely ocean
island that he alone could make out.
Though I've seen that island, hovering hidden
among streets and swings and endless
foothill conifers.

The gray man sat at a picnic table and drank
something from a canteen. Our busy sounds,
our happy act of sun and love and play, versus
his solitary, measured sipping.

The sun low, I packed up the little man
and strapped him in his stroller.
When I reached the edge of the fence,
the gray man had vanished. I'd expected him
to be there. I saw that island of ours, empty
and swept by blunt waves.

I walked home, pushed the little man
over the big hill of Walsh Street,
and pressed all ten
digits of you. You've become
a gray man too.

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