Pedronaut

The old man, who wrote poetry in his dying language that no one read, wrote or published anymore, slowly finished his lunch and put on his coat, keeping me waiting, my meter outside ticking like a metronome percussioning the sound-bed to an homerican odyssey in a day's journey, in a Joycean storybook. The details of the last potato, their back story, their ancestors from south america, survived the great hunger, the knife, the fork, their back story, their stainless steel progression through the iron age via bronze and tin and stone and wood and bone. The coat's synthetic fibres, the chair's seat revealed as he erected himself, the table cleared, the pretty waitor woman paid, my car's exhaust fumes blending with the cigarette smoke of the afternoon cafe chap's, cafe creme cigarillos. The conversations in the midst of all this getting here, led to 13 American men walking on the moon.

“Do you speak it yourself he asked”

“Not since I was twelve” I said

And held him, like i used to hold my grandmother, and led him outside to meet his maker; The Mirror, in the gutter's rainfallen puddle, reflecting the stars.