Travel Old Man

One of those old men on porches across the world sitting
Staring at flowers and woods and grass and passers-by
Thinking it’s a pretty little world I’ve hauled through
But having done nothing
Empty I’ll sit and those vacant eyes will
Fill with vision memories of what?

Of days and weeks on end wasted in the colossal
Hazy eyed binges of an extended irreverence
Or nights spent alone and hollow-eyed wondering what happened
To the perfect little girl I never found
And the hollering running erring lovable children
I never raised never bore
Never saw become my betters
In mind-spirit-body
Or the expansive volumes of fluid eloquence
That never flowed from out a pen tip.

And will that porch be all I know,
No sights seen of nature’s grace and power
On high topped white peaks
Or the blackest garden green
In the lost jungles of neglected continents
Or the rolling soft grass hills
Of my Celtic ancestry
Or the vast seas of unmelted glass
Where a man could walk and disappear and die
Alone and content that it was on his own terms

AB 02/09/00
PTBO

Rev. 01/14/02