Uncle Joe,
Quietly a bachelor,
All his 77 years,
Never spoke an unkind word
I ever heard.

Most afternoons,
He sat in his brown chair
Behind my Grandfather.

Two old French men,
Smoking pipes
Talking slow and low
In English, French-laced,
Laden with Quebec enunciation
Though they'd not been back
For sixty years.

I didn't think he'd ever loved a girl,
My Uncle Joe,
And then his nephew spilled the beans
One day to me.

Alice was the damsel's name,
But innocence was not her style,
And so my great-grandma,
Memere, disapproved,
Clucked her tongue,
Hands on hips,
Glared and crossed herself,
Whenever Alice came around.

Still, Joe pursued
Until the day she walked out
To the field where he was plowing
Behind a team of horses.

She didn't think ahead.
So when her dress billowed out
As she walked up,
She set the team in fright.

Uncle Joe,
Too shocked to act,
Fell feet first into the foot board,
And down the field the horses dragged
The plow and Uncle Joe.

They stopped before disaster came,
And Uncle Joe crawled out.

When he stood up,
He ended any chance that Alice
Had with him.

"Dat **** girl near got me ****!"
His exclamation.

So it was
He lived sixty more years
Safely and alone.