All it took was a few minutes a day of my time, and in return he regaled to me the story of a lifetime
I often smiled, and quite often my teenage face did indeed turn pale
The yellow-blue snail at the bottom of the garden, the pretty one that he will try to watch, his mid-morning hue he likes to calls ‘yellow and blue’
Imagine that
The pot he smuggled through customs way back when
A tale of how he and his war-torn friends attempted to find their zen again
A pen to point out the dire straits of being called to a war
Crusty old dog-earred manuscripts sleeping oh so soundly inside of his bedroom drawer
We awoke the beast to a most inviting feast – juiced apples and pears picked oh so ripely from his late-wife Bertha’s tree
Just you and me, dining in the late-summer sunshine, sipping on cherry cola to unwind one simple fool, remind the other, smother those memorable moments before it all turned sour
Torn both inside and out, rather akin to a fallen ladies Vancouveria Hexandra flower
A bullet ripping clean off his upper lip, stripping away his ability to talk the talk whenever it came to those reckless Vietnam women
Didn’t seem to matter, compared to his Stateside lady-in-waiting they would all pale in comparison
One correct decision made on his part, therein the real parade may just lie
Apt to say right this minute, but the every apple of his eye, rotten in it’s very own way, why couldn’t she stay!?
Corporal Nelson – sad and beaten down now, guised by dust-ridden medals to remind him of all those heartbreaking/bellyaching times, both good and bad
Turning slowly to tell me just how glad he is to see me, every day come a quarter-to-nine
Soon as the neighbourhood kids cease to playing, cease their boisterous whining
Oh, did I remember to tell you that he was blind?
I will continue to sit here and listen oh so intently ’til he can manage to find his way again
Quench these interrogative flames that still pain him