07/17/2025
"A hand fit my hand as perfectly as a hand held out to a stranger in church!"
FACTORY WORKER WALKING HOME IN THE DARK!
Leonardo once said, and every photographer knows:
Evening's the best time to capture a nose.
Mona Lisa smiling, trying hard not to doze.
The smile on her face casting light on our souls.
I know a town with such a peaceful tableau.
It was home to a factory worker I know.
He worked in the city and the traffic was slow.
His car-pool let him off with a mile left to go.
"A mile's walk can be short in the middle of May."
He said, "But then there was that one winter’s day:
The sky had been gloomy, but now it was black.
When I climbed from the car to straighten my back,
I could see nothing," he said, "No thing, in fact!”
Except the tail-light on that rickety gray Pontiac.
With nothing but darkness from which to commence
And no radar to follow except his sixth sense
He chose his steps deftly like a cat on a fence.
He sang songs.
But the few he knew, which were indeed very few,
Left him appalled by the echo of his voice
And the things ears "see" when there's no better choice.
Ancient farm wagons
Whistling with tines,
Barn doors swinging
To the wind's lonely rhymes.
Tin signs banging
Revenge if ignored,
Protesting the outcome
Of some real estate war.
"I kicked something." he said, "It sounded hollow."
It rolled. He had no option than to follow.
"Oh!" I jeered, "Like Red Riding Hood finding a flower?
You strayed into the fair meadow
Searching for another and then another and another,
Forgetting the way to your precious grandmother!?"
He refused to be amused by my attempt to confuse.
"A hand." he said,
"I leaned over and reached down
and a hand fit my hand
as perfectly
as a hand held out
to a stranger in church!"
True to the saying
"He froze in his tracks."
Conjugating feelings with facts
While endless long silence passed.
Was he now the new Ish Ra El:
The Man Who Wrestles God and Lives to Tell?
Or,
Could this be the handle
to a new kind of Hell
Which the ancients discovered
But fled from as well?
Each theory passed
In a moment of time
As long as it takes
To pick up a dime.
"So what was it you had!?" I said.
He laughed, as though he had forgotten I was there.
An ordinary mortal of course, he said,
A pitiful soul who had lost his hat, that's all.
When I kicked it back to him.
He reached for my hand as well,
Expecting a friend to shout, Okay pal,
Let's get you home by the bell.
But hearing nothing (by God!)
And deciding he’s already home,
He laid back in the arms of the Lord
A Renaissance King, crown safely restored.
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