* short poem

* I just had to write something, not necessarily this, but it's what came out... kinda like when you finish dinner and, unfulfilled, you know you need a bowl of peanut butter and syrup.

Bernie said
"The sadness
is beautiful,"
and he couldn't cry,
looking upon the funeral party.

This man patrolled
car lots,
smiled,
held fishing line
in his nimble fingers, able
to tie a hook.
Bernie reveled in
the splendid crevaces
found within those loose cheeks,
that white hair,
those watery, blind, wishful eyes.
The man told stories of why
he had a thumb, one finger,
and three stubs.
"I can't remember what I just told you,"
explained the old man,
"but I remember dynamite like it was yesterday."
He caressed textured
paintings. Wind eroded
his mind, having lived 13 years
on a mountain.
Art, for him, was three men
in a bathtub and
the weather,
a lady in a frying pan.
And he always asked
the same questions.
Last years, too weak to
get up; final year
too frail to hold.
Bernie can't remember
his embrace.
The man died laying
in hospice
without the breath for more stories,
staring ahead without seeing,
visited daily by those saying goodbye.
The sadness was beautiful.