Driving to work down Farmhill Boulevard, in the midst of slogging
across this past year's river of despair, ungainly movement on my left,
75 yards ahead, across the wide boulevard, arrested my self-attention.
A curiously awkward shape: one part pink, smaller; the other, blue, large,
adjacent to the street, shuffled haltingly toward a small, yellow school bus/van.
Almost abreast, I saw the shape was a broad-backed
man, taller than a 6 rung electrician's ladder, in faded blue jeans,
a blue-green plaid shirt and brown high-top work boots,
arms hanging lankly at his side, being gently led through their
dull tempoed minuet by a woman with her stubby, pink arm
firmly around his waist. She, a foot shorter, even sturdier, was
clothed, Saturday breakfast casual, in tasseled brown slippers and
a faded, pink, terry cloth housecoat; her white hair, tightly,
jauntily held in place by an iridescent, magenta scarf.
Drawing even with the shambling pair I understood!
Her love, her energy, focused, helped him achieve what he could
not! For his unlined, youthful face was slack, cast down. It held
no promise, no memory, no anticipation that his days, his
nights, his world were or ever would be bright!
Recognition, resignation brought a deep sigh. Then,
I realized my present anguish would be over soon and I
would move on.
He never could!
As if tossed from my storm ravaged raft into a
perilous, roiling sea cataclysmic waves of sorrow, of anger, of joy,
of guilt, of thankfulness, of pity, of understanding, of relief
collided: overpowering, freeing me.
I wept!
driving to work down Farmhill Boulevard!
Driving To Work Down Farmhill
A.D. Williams
Poetry