-A plausible alternative to findings in the obit pages-

My childhood friend, Manuel Bento-Sousa

Was born on this day, as was Marcel Proust I see,

Whose literature I’ve not read a word, but––

Neither have I read the writings of Manuel Bento-Sousa.

I understand he might not have written things down

As he came across them, but of this I can't be certain.

My reasoning here is fundamental.
Simply because I haven't read Bento-Sousa
Doesn't mean he didn't write things down.

He might have been as attached to his father’s

Chevrolet as I was to my father’s Buick and
Kept a running account of his daily observations in verse
Secretly bundled in dresser drawers like Emily Dickinson.

I’d like to have read those poems.

Maybe his first true love was the girl upstairs 

For whom I had more than a passing fancy.

The first love of my life was reserved to my bike
Always willing and able,

Leaning on the wall in the entry, first floor, a kinship, we two

And I pray accounts of which are not now perceived as saccharine. 
I remember ––

In the junkyard with the rest of us ––

Bento, breaking away, busy with curiosity over the blue,

Sheet-metaled bubble of the bruised and battered Henry J Coupe

As we engaged in the postmortem of the long dead fat-cat's

1940s Cadillac Eldorado hood ornament, almost no rust, and I thought:
How foolish of Bento to ignore such a spoil as this.

Nothing I see on the obituary page about that.
It's an insult to both our sensibilities that singular enlightenments
Such as these are historically ignored by the column-writers
And our own aging populations.

Bento died before me, I'm now informed.

Says here, he was living in southern Ohio,
Not far from the Appalachian foothills where I once lived,

But not during the same six years.
A retired school teacher, it says.

I'd have never thought it possible of Bento.
He leaves me behind to speak of things no one else can,

Or has a mind to.

He leaves behind a wife, I'm here told in cold print;
Maybe the girl upstairs I’m now left alone to romance
And I’d like to have read that poem, too.

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