THE CURMUDGEON
My youth lies on the other side of the horizon.
When did I stop loving and start despising
All the people and other living things
That come my way from time to time each day?
My lens was clear and now it is clouded,
My spirit was free and now it is shrouded
In doubt and suspicion of all I see.
Years of questions with no hints or answers,
Of blooming flowers turned to cancers,
Of expectations inevitably unmet,
Hoping only to smoke my next cigarette.
It happened so slowly I could not see
The disillusion trickling into me,
A murky pool that drowns all pleasure,
Now too deep for me to measure.
But enough of generalities
Because people are my casualties,
Mostly neighbors in the mobile home park
Whose lives have also, somehow, missed the mark.
Rose walks by my folding chair
Almost every day with a big hello,
Gets from me at best a stare.
I don’t know where she goes.
Ian ripped through a couple years ago.
For weeks FEMA trucks would come and go
Taking piles of aluminum and domestic debris,
Backbreaking cleanup and arthritis killing me.
It’s a wonder anything could stand,
A mile inland, we were ankle-deep in sand.
I didn’t really care
Who left or who stayed,
Whose insurance fought
And who got paid.
I look in the mirror and wonder
Why I couldn’t summon a tear
For lives reduced to piles of trash,
Nowhere to go, not one folding chair
Or photograph.
I sit out front in my folding chair,
Not caring a hurricane is in the air,
Thinking about my next cigarette,
Wondering if it’s the last one yet.
I don’t know how Rose came out,
I never thought to ask.
I never thought.
I never …
I think I’ll make a pitcher of tea
And bring it on the porch with me.
I see Rose shuffling over this way.
I’ll ask her if she wants iced tea,
Then maybe she will sit with me.
We can watch the storm roll in together,
Talk about horizons and the weather.
