The old man looks miserable
in the sunshine.
He realizes the bugs have come back
from the winter
and the street is a river of cars,
current too fast to cross.
He stands all alone on the corner,
the sun beating down, bald without clouds,
and remembers his wife with a shiver.
The way that he felt when she sat next to him
and the spring is a terrible lover.
It comes like a drug and it leaves you undone.
So he rolls up his sleeves,
an old ex-marine and shoots a look
over his shoulder.
But the ghost just ain’t there
and he scrunches his nose.
Takes a step off the curb
and the whoosh of a car
almost blows him over.
So he sits and he cries
on the side of the sidewalk,
in the sun the tears dry,
no one stops to help,
they’ve all busied their lives.
And that’s how it ends,
an old man on the street
on the first day of spring.
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