Ouroboros

(for Bob Hock)

The first thing I thought

was What if this is

the last time I ever see him?

He’d just come from the CVS

and was crossing the street with

an un-customary grimace on his face,

contorting into a crescent smile

the moment he saw

me closing in.

I could tell he was in pain

and he probably 

didn’t want me knowing it,

never wanting to draw attention

to his defects or failings

as he was trying so clumsily 

to be one of the living.

His grocery bag dangled

like a drug addict’s purse,

a green leafy lettuce

poking out from it, 

a feeble reach towards freshness.

He was one of those rare men of age

that still kept up with cooking

his own meals.

That, and he had needed his refills.

They say he’d come around

to Bingo and was looking much better

in the last week.

He’d even been seen

binging on an over-sized 

wedge of birthday cake;

a grown man channeling 

a wide-eyed child,
even as life threatened to become
more than he could chew.

I can see that photo-ready face

he must have made, 

an actor still ready to deploy a mask.

He always announced himself

with that funny gait of his

that made him so easily imitatable;

a stride that, I felt sure, had been quite sexy

in youth, but now had resolved into

a kind of wounded affectation. I knew

he was in pain only because

we once spoke about 

the evils of opioids

after an un-characteristic confession that his feet

hurt him with every step for a decade.

“How are you feeling,” I asked.

“Oh, I’m soldiering on,” he said flippantly.

He was wearing one of his plaids.

His flannels always made me think of the Midwest.

I think he was from Illinois or Michigan,

a life bolstered by it’s proximity 

to water.

Was it poetic license that he once added: 

“Every mother is a natural body of water.”

I pretended to know what he meant.

Once I saw him talking to a much

more youthful man

that looked like the other end of himself.

I wondered whatever were

they telling each other.

Why is it so odd

to see the young interact with the old?

Maybe because there's only so many ways 

a man can hide a battlefield with a smile.

I keep to myself, he once said. 

The youth today are animals.

I gave him the benefit

of his cliche convinced that it

was just his loneliness talking.

Maybe we’re all animals

until we birth a soul,

I thought to say, but didn’t

as I wasn’t about to lecture him.

But my inner thoughts continued 

to close the circle.

What if a soul is not a given?

What if we were cobbling one

together all along

even as we used

those imaginary tools

of childhood?

He had a fear of falling.

Life had become a balancing act,

each day passed in

a death-defying circus ring.

Of late, he’d taken to walking

around the block looking for

someone who’d dare to meet his eyes.

More than that, he wanted

to be seen straight through 

to his insides.

To meet that person

who could apprehend the 

journey that was curling

around itself like an embryo

at the heart of him,

as if an affable visibility might

bring him full circle.

Could I be that person?

Dilapidation had begun to

bring reassurance;

a wabi sabi of acceptance

of one’s own diminishment,

even as his handsomeness

had long since sunk beneath 

it's lunar surface,

he was and is a man of great beauty.

On his worst days, his spirit

felt like parched flowers 

in a waterless vase.

He thought of Mrs. Conrad

who kept a jar of crisp

rust-colored roses

by the side of her bed

where dust had formed 

an encasing web,

unwilling to bring herself

to clear it away;

the last of her beloved’s cells

as precious as 

the memory of a first snow.

Now, back on the raw reality

of 10th Ave and 43rd,

a wind conspiring to 

blow us both away,
I embraced this civil war 

of a man

and for one 

un-embattled moment

he and I became 

a circle of two.

Peter Valentyne

February 9th, 2019