The Poet

The poet comes up the road that the sun has baked to a faded yellow. His collar is open and his throat glistens with sweat. His thin brown hair is damp and plastered down. He's not young and there's no car in sight; he must have walked all the way from Lisbon! Guardedly he holds out a thin book whose hard covers are as thick as the rest of it. Mom brings him inside and gets a glass of water from the kitchen and a piece of last night's pie from the fridge. He sits back in the armchair, sipping, eating, telling in between about his writing. He was here last year, too, around this time. Mom knows about the poems. She goes to her purse for a dollar and he shoulders his bag back to the road. Dad has a fit! "You gave him a dollar? For this batch of baloney? He waves the book in the air. "Nobody pays me a dollar to sit around and draw "may..day. say.. way! Nobody here gets paid to lick a pencil!" Mom looks down as if contrite but her eyes are not sorry. (1938)