Posted in Passages

Artisan

Posted on by tq1695

Howard
a name that had ceased to be used
more than old-fashioned, a decade later
extinct.
A quiet boy in a noisy world :
tractors,
trailers,
trucks –
hard labour and strong language.

Thin and balletic
a  dancer at a shot-put meeting
or wrestling ring.
Half my age – exactly
11 and 22
perhaps symmetry grappled attention.
Ethereal
good-looking
pretty,
beautiful even.

Many years later I learned he
had the love of many
had, had many lovers
and was a poet. I shouldn’t have been surprised.

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Author:

Most of my life has been spent on the bench, occasionally called into the game by extravagance or attenuation. Waiting has turned a loner into a recorder - nondescript and inconsequential, more not noticed than overlooked - the non-vantage point of children not yet considered old enough to understand. Orphaned Islands (Un)poetry is a lifetime of picking anecdotes up and not throwing them away. Stories collected like odds and ends placed in a box in the basement, the garage, the garden shed - uncertain as to what their use might be but knowing that one day there might be one.