Sometimes I wonder what people think of
me as they pass by. I wonder what that little child with his ice
cream pop thinks I am doing. I wonder what thoughts I cause in the
people who speed swiftly down the street on bicycles, coupes, inline
skates, what images I conjure in the minds of poets who might be
strolling down the street, looking for a muse, a simple idea or
picture or comment that might place one word firmly behind the next,
and then more words following in a line or a stanza or a battalion of
rhetorical soldiers.
Perhaps they look at me and see me at
face value, just a frail old man sitting on a bench, jotting in a
notebook while feeding pigeons on the sidewalk that leads into the
entrance of the park. Perhaps they try to suppose my life story, my
circumstances, maybe thinking my wife could have died years ago from
terminal brain cancer, my children moved away to the corners of the
world, the notebook filled with all the words I would have said to my
wife, the pigeons filled with all the bread I would have given to my
children.
I look at the pigeons, I look at the
people, and I can't help but smile a bit. And I look down into my
notebook, and my smile turns to a grin as I write the words I've been
waiting my whole life to put down:
“Phase One Complete.”
“Delta Strike is Go.”
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