In Other Eyes

Someone to trust with parcels, because
he’s ‘always in’; the character
who locks the gate at night and lingers
to make that one-too-many joke;
who isn’t sure sometimes what has
issued from the opening of his mouth;
whose wet shoe lets out a squeal
as he fills the kettle with a rising note;
one of those lonely bigots, perhaps —
remnant of a lost or withered
habitat — part of the daylight
burial of the living old.