Your old brown chair sits waiting for you
Here behind me as I write, thirty years after your death.

You, the quiet bachelor with the twinkling eyes
Smoking pipe and soft French voice.
Always Charlie’s second,
A good mechanic, but a better blacksmith.

When the police said you couldn’t drive anymore,
You went home and died of sadness.
Unable to leave home, you stayed.

I still remember the day
The ambulance screamed southward
As I played on Grandpa’s lawn.

It was you on your way out,
Going in style.

Published July 09, 20