To storytellers and their stories...

The poem below is a type of vignette about an art form that is dying. The oral tradition of storytelling and the characters who would tell the stories. There is nothing quite like hearing a musician or a poet live on center stage articulating their chosen work. So this little writing is dedicated to the art of the storyteller;

For Him To Be Remembered
(the town’s storyteller)

Now mortality was setting in.
He was rocking-chair rolling in recollection
of things he had thought and said.

Then, seemed so long, long ago.
He hadn’t realized now
could creep up so fast.

Now seemed so alone-like.
He had out-lived all friends.
His present was the recompense of the past.

With deliberateness he took his labor-wrinkled hand
and put it in his pocket pulling
out a tattered handkerchief. With his other lined
hand he removed his metal framed spectacles
and cleaned the lenses methodic.
A routine honed through the years.

He took note of me watching him,
and with the same worn cloth
he patted the beads of sweat
from is forehead as he said to me;

"son, I have but one wish after I am buried–
like all men–
to be quoted on occasion..."