!: Old Mrs Stanley (a Poem Out Of The Early '60s)

She sits on her porch and knits

in the mornings, bending at the

windowsill, with those old, old

waxed fingers, you can almost

see those old perturbing veins

from where I stand, she's just

smiling away-looking up and

down Cayuga Street, checking

out the boys and girls, the gang:

my old neighbor, and widow,

at ninety-three, Mrs. Stanley.

When noon comes around, she'll

switch windows, pull back the

curtain, in the kitchen, spoon

in her soup; check out the birds

in her birdbath, splashing water

all about, she bought it after her

husband passed on, perhaps from

boredom. She doesn't care if

I'm looking over the fence, to see

her looking back, I'm just a

teenagers, wet behind the ears,

a neighborhood fact, a dupe.

In the evenings, in summer, she'll

pull weeds from her backyard

garden, a few vegetables will grow

back there; not much to speak of,

carrots and cucumbers.

I think, or so it seeps up from deep

within my head, "Doesn't she

have anything else to do?" I'm being

really kind of cruel, she knows this

from my looks...she really seems

kind of homeless to me, in that big

house, but she knows I don't care;

and neither does she.

Now at sixty, I can kind of identify

with her, I'm in my little house garden,

pulling dead leaves off geraniums,

picking up dead worms, looking out

my bedroom curtains, trying to see

what teenagers plan on robbing me,

and how soon, will I be able to go to sleep.

Mrs. Stanley, her husband died about 1960 at the age of 67, if I recall right, after retiring from the Railroad, he didn't live long after his retirement, perhaps two years. He bought a 1959-Rambler, drove it one year, and that was it, it sat in the garage for the next five years. Not sure why, Perhaps Mrs. Stanley loved him more than I could conceive. #1518 (2006)(reedited, and revised, 5-2008) If she could see me now, know me now, she'd say: "Dennis, you fooled me, you actually became somebody!"