Posted in Passages

Etched

Posted on by tq1695

He always smiled,
and nodded or waved –
not the languor of people passing
effort was involved,
as if he wanted to acknowledge me
and for me to know he had.

I asked if I knew him,
“ no.”
Still he continued – maybe mistaken identity
except there seemed no confusion.
A while later I asked again.
We were both at a supermarket front desk,
me for exchange
him, then a schoolboy, to collect employment application.
I wished him luck
he had not forgotten.

Advertisement

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.