He was a Maine lumberjack
felling dead trees in the woods behind
his house at the foot of Bank Street.
He was Tailspin Tommy doing loopty-loops
in his backyard swing.
He was Buck Jones riding his trusty broom Silver
chasing cattle rustlers around
the vacant lot behind the corner post office.
He was Tarzan swinging
on the limbs of the neighbor’s fig tree.
He was Tom Sawyer
whitewashing the old woodshed
and Huckleberry Finn dipping a fishing line
from a makeshift raft on Sunset Creek.
He was Jack Dempsey boxing fifteen rounds
with his cousin Gene Tunney inside a rope ring
stretched from the whitewashed woodshed
to the trunk of a pecan tree and his dad’s
old Packard rusting in the weeds.
He was Douglas Fairbanks Junior flashing
his wooden sword as he leaped from the back porch
and somersaulted over his mother’s bird bath.
He was every daredevil gun-toting, tobacco-chewing
swaggering, smooth-talking, danger-loving
white-hat hero and hombre he ever saw
on Saturday mornings slumped in the front seat
at the Langley picture show.
Until the kids began to call him Jeep
because he shared the same name and
because he had a conspicuous nose and wise eyes
and was expected to read the future
like the two-foot creature in the Popeye cartoon
although he was too big to be Popeye’s Jeep
and he let it pass because it was better
than the sissy name he was given.
But then he grew up to be the tall, lanky guy
that some folks say looks a little like James Bond
or Gregory Peck in Roman Holiday
or even the lousy actor who was making out
with Fay Wray in King Kong
while others stopped him on the street to ask
are you somebody?