George Drew: Shared Space

My Uncle Frank was a weird bird, everybody who knew him

knew it and kept space between him and themselves,

space he filled by talking to himself as he hustled along Main Street,

always looking down at his clodhopper-shod feet. Uncle Frank,

whenever he left the bedroom off his sister Virginia’s garage

where he spent his final years, padlocked the door.

Hanging out with the cool, hip dudes in front of the library,

I’d cross the street whenever I saw him coming our way; he’d stop

and mumble something about the weather or the Yankees’ recent game,

a sidewalk on Main Street our only shared space. When he died,

he left five hundred bucks to me, money I guess he thought I’d earned

talking to him, weird bird, right there on Main for everyone to see.

Copyright 2022 George Drew

George Drew is the author of Drumming Armageddon (Madville, 2020).