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!"
| Price : $400.00
