Member Poem

My great-grandfather lived in our house until Nana died.
He was seventy-three when he first held me,
always the old man walking the edges of my life.

On a day, he’d appear at the break in the fence.
No telling how long he’d been watching
from the place where his hives used to be.

We’d be all “Ollie, Ollie in free” until someone called, “Poppy,”
we’d turn to the little man
who knew more than anyone about electricity, bees, pigeons, and dynamite.

He’d have pennies for us that he ought to have kept and
never would come up to the house,
something we never understood as he waived us off with a glance at his pocket watch.

His wife had died there, in that house, where his granddaughter cared for them.
She was dead, too.
Later, my father would be upset about the pennies that we had taken from him.

Older now, I understand that the jingle in his pocket was less musical
than our shouted greeting,
which made his old bones feel human again.

I remember once going to his room in the boarding house
where he lived.
It was dark and smelled of the incontinence that always followed him.

There was a hotplate on the stand near the bed and a jar of pennies
proudly poured out
as my Dad quietly slipped two dollars under a doily on the dresser.