In her all alone time
she smiled
half crooked smiles
and whispered
his name aloud
sounding wicked
as red.
Sometimes thinking
back to the first
time she had seen him
whistling
a sad nameless tune.
She didn't exactly
teach Sunday school
but she prayed at night
and called Mother often
and kept teddy bears
and trinkets
and lived well.
Her high school
Knight had lost his shine
and most of his hair.
He sold cars
and watched television
and ate Tums.
Arianna's beauty
was unfaded.
She was like music
heard from far away
drawing you near.
Like Hamlin's rat
he came to her song.
He was the talk
of the big little town
they lived in,
and whenever the
old women mentioned him
they shook their heads
and made comparisons
to the Grandfather he'd
come to see whose
own grandfather
had fought the English
with his face painted blue
and sired the first
of their line to
come to America.
He sat on a park bench
drinking bourbon
from a paper sack
and felt a twinge of guilt
that he didn't like Scotch.
Listening to trains
and their slow
metered steps moving along
tracks quickening
to roaring din.
Lighting a smoke
he thought of her.
Something kind of close
to love, he smiled
then picked up
his ditty and whistling
headed out of town.
