Around the corner he chanced to walk one day,
unsurely entering the back yard,
where I sat in a fold-up chair,
searching for a poem’s theme:
he, a hobo—
yes, a gentleman of the road.
Seeing me, he abruptly stopped, but stayed,
gigantic shoulders flexing as if to keep him frozen
between the lonely realm of the dispossessed
and a warmer vision of place.
Over the days, he reappeared—
chancing more steps toward affinity.
Now I lower vision to the massive, tan oval on my lap,
at last come to live with us.
I ponder the lugubrious singularity of his biography.
Who possibly could have abandoned him?
How shocking must it have felt
to abruptly be rendered alone?
What had he been forced to eat to survive
and how often had he not found water?
How large and ferocious had been the animals
he’d been forced to fight?
Just how savage had the shadows been?
I subtly glance toward scars on his face,
empathizing with dark suppositions.
Yet, when Big Boy briefly repostures to feel the full dance
of one hand’s slow tickle through the fur,
I remember that his nightmares lived are over—
and the visit of worries drifts away.
I slowly regrasp a small glass in the other hand,
lifting it closer to my eyes
to watch the beauty of sunlight pass through
little waves of liquid red.
And here we two dwell in a poetry chair.
We sit under the travel of clouds.
We feel the welcome of a breeze.
We smile at the sky.
And although here we sit in a poetry chair,
we will let this day void itself of greater quest.
We will lean back, into a themeless day,
and we will just leave it at that—
he to feel safe in the posturing
and I to drink wine with my cat.
Tom McFadden lives with his wife in Austin, Texas where they have raised three daughters. Tom’s writing has appeared in PARIS/ATLANTIC, LONDON GRIP, POETRY IRELAND REVIEW, POETRY SALZBURG REVIEW, HONG KONG REVIEW, SEATTLE REVIEW and CALIFORNIA QUARTERLY.
