Old Man, The
by Casey Jespon
© 1999

Seven gusts of wind silence the air
and roll out the Red Carpet for the Royal Sparrow.
The leaves on the ground and bricks in the walls salute,
but the Old Man does not.
The ghost of Hitler rides by in a carriage pulled by four horsemen
The gothic iron fences raise their arms and declair “Heil!”
but the Old Man does not.
Every day I see the Old Man sitting on park bench #32
with his blistered right hand outstretched in some humble offering.
In his palm lay seven seeds-
the kind you would buy by the thousands at a hardware store-
as if to becon the pigeons closer
But there are no pigeons.
The seeds have sat there so long,
through rain and snow and sun
that I fear they will soon sprout
and grow larger than the hand that holds them.
He stares forward past his hand
As if looking at the pigeons that are not there
and his eyes never change direction.
He’s been staring at the cobblestone so long
that he must’ve memorized every groove and bump in the texture by now.
The town gossip, a 92-year-old librarian,
says he hasn’t blinked since 1862
And she would know; she’s been here longer than any of us.
Sometimes, in the summer, I sit down next to him
and ask “Howzit Gowing?”
but he does not answer me.
Maybe the lichen in his unbrushed hair has grown into his ears;
Or maybe he does not want to hear me.
His purpose in life is to make sure that
Nobody Else
gets to sit there,
on the east end of park bench #32
Occasionally an American tourist will see him
pretending to be catatonic
and spray paint the latest gangland logo
across his chest.
How he wishes this were Singapore.
His skin has turned hard with age
and on less sunny days he appears cobalt blue
from head to toe.
He has never toured the Big Ben clocktower
He has never gotten pissed off his ass in a Scottish pub
He has never fallen in love
He knows every Shakespearian drama inside & out
from all the people who sit next to him and read
Yet all he thinks about are the pigeons.
His left hand sits benevolently on his left knee
I once put my hand on his
It was cold and icy as the ground
that January morning
The sun had barely risen to warm it.
Each finger on that hand was at least an inch longer than mine,
and substantially thicker
As were my grandfather’s when he used to hold me
and rock my four-year-old body to sleep.
You cannot rock this Old Man
He weighs more than any man his size.
Passing drunkards will scowl at him, saying
“You won’t get thith whiskey, ith Mine!”
then throw the bottle at his feet.
A youth once smelled him and asked
“How could you have gone to the bathroom, sir?
You never drink.”
The Old Man has a name, but he does not know.
It is written on a marble plaque
behind the bench, where he cannot see it
Inscribed with the date he first sat down.
Some day the aliens will land and say to himv “Take me to your leader”
and then stand there for days waiting for a reply.
I feel an obligation to love this Old Man
because nobody else will.
And I hate him becaue he has done nothing to earn my love
He has done nothing for society
and they have done nothing for him.
He just sits there on the east side of
park bench #32
Looking southward for the pigeons that are not there.