-the old-timer-

The old-timer lives upstairs,

Has a wife there, has framed pictures
Of smiling family tacked on the walls

And propped-up on the end-tables. 

He tinkers with tools in the basement.

This man is older than I am.

His sight is slipping into darkness.

He walks with hesitating carefulness

And one of his hands is seen to shake

Involuntarily.

I don’t now what he’s attempting to assemble,

Fix or ruin in the basement.

He will die soon enough.

He has informed me that his niece

Has been willed his belongings including
The new cable ready television sitting
In the living room.  

When asked what his wife of nearly

Sixty years of marriage, of being there,
Of daily knick-knack dusting, 
Of nagging, bed-making, straightening-up
And years of dispassionate silence while sitting
Nightly at the side of his Lazyboy
Five feet from the face of the screen
Will be left with during the lonely, 

Singular days of her remaining life— 
He simply grunted, walking deliberately
Down the stairs to the basement to all
His dark and secret things.




                      Bedford and Eddy / Fall River