A Man Called Joe

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Lost in the past, my thoughts collide,
how one so gallant could survive
three wars.  He braved them, death- defied,
and left his place in history

Yet, time would take his breath away,
without fanfare, one winter's day
Death's coldest draft came through these floors,
and took more than a glimpse of him.

It now seems wrong, to come right in,
to trespass on the throne of life,
quietly lived beyond a fence,
where thirsty rows of cornstalks wait,
like sentries at a soldier's wake

I hesitate, to disgrace the gloom 
open the drawers,  to snoop, and sort
The pruning through the worn and torn.
My hands are able, but my heart declines
what isn’t mine, to toss, to find, to mark, and label

Whispered breaths, like weaving looms,
are stories that he told me then.
And how he watched his children play...
The ones who never came again,
to see him at the very end.

The dark descends, and I must go,
but some of him remains, I know
in every shadow of this room.

I'm glad I knew the man called Joe


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1/13/15  For Giorgio's Contest: "Sketch a Character"
By Carrie Richards

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