Hammock Guy

Watching for the sun to set,

His eyes roam through roadside palm trees

Where so much white tries so hard.

Villas.

Hotels.

Mansions.

Life guard stations.

No life guards.

As he checks his watch often,

All seems so out of sync.

The sun taking its time

Like always he grumbles

He’s got him a hammock though.

Beats a cardboard box.

He sits.

He rocks.

Stares at the sandy flower beds of Lantana,

Having just learned their name.

Flowers were foreign growing up in a NY railroad apartment.

Door locked.

Shades pulled,

Allowing mere slivers of light to spill across his mattress.

Radiator always cold.

Winters,

Summers,

Just the same.

Flowers?

Something uptown people had.

Always the same.

Here he was mid-age,

Feeling in his 80s,

Swaying in his hammock to nowhere

Like an over ripe coconut looking for a place to drop

Waiting for…

Just waiting and watching

The sun to set and be rid of another day.

Sometimes it was the best part of the day.

Sandy beaches turning orange,

Getting ready to say hello to the blue dusk

Before the colors are swallowed by the dark of night.

Like me,

Waiting

For closed eyes to happen,

Wonderland’s curtain-raising hour.

Every night

It comes under eyelids of dreamt fantasies made real.

He mumbled to himself

“I’ve no right to be bitchin’.”

Curtain going up!