He’d never met the old man, of course,
As he’d put haylofts and horseshit behind him
Faster than a body could say “Jack Robinson”,
Though he’d met the son when he’d come through
For a quick hello-and-how’m-I-doing back in sixty-five or sixty-six
(I’d asked him, he’d often say while sharing a laugh with himself,
If the ‘A’ in Nelson A. stood for ’A ******* heap of money.')
No one from that branch of the family comes around anymore,
(It being unlikely they could find the place on a map,
Even one of the few which nodded toward its existence)
Having long since given up on the land in general
And, most certainly, this piece in particular,
Though he carriers the banner for the patronymic
In the ancestral family environs
(The surname, once universally known and,
Depending on one’s outlook,
Revered or reviled, now an anachronistic footnote,
Consigned to a black-and-white era
Like so many I Love Lucy re-runs)
Living in the front rooms of what passes for a house on Bowery Lane,
And he will, all too close to invariably for those old-timers
Who gather at the compact little diner at the four corners
(Its life blood dependent on parents dropping off their progeny
At the tony schools over in Ithaca, the regulars passing the time
In mock argument over which one of them
Actually owns the BMW with Connecticut plates)
All but cackle Boys, I’d gladly pick up the tab today,
But the lawyers are still hagglin’ over my part of the inheritance,
And once he has finished the final refill of coffee,
He slowly negotiates his way out of his chair and heads out,
The gravelly shoulder of the highway all too noticeable
Through the thinning soles of his secondhand boots.