One Elderly Man in Siberia: a poem
One Elderly Man in Siberia
I wonder why I chose
Such a specific man
Unknown to me
Perhaps a lost uncle
Whose family wandered
east instead of west
Perhaps I’ll have to accept
I will never know
If the poem reaches him
In his cozy den
Heated by the oil
From the pipeline
His pipe smokes itself
Still runs for now
The lines of pipe
And lines of bread
With cup of black tea
And crust of rye
The one-eyed cat
On his lap
The name of the cat
Escapes me but the cat
Never escapes
Not during the eight months of winter
He hears this poem
But can’t read it
Never reads the poems himself
The young man
Arrives every Thursday
After lunch
Via snowmobile
Drops off the mail
Reads an hour of poems
Then uses the bathroom
(All the tea, all the tea)
Before pulling on his fancy parka
Opening the front door
The cat shivers with only one gust
And slaloms off back to town.
The young man gone.
The old man snoring.
The poems lingering
In the cat’s ears.
***
For more of my poems, check out Sun Capture.
