What the eye sees is a wisp
of a man with faded Charlie Brown hair
and time-yellowed teeth.
But the smile is so much more
Feeds us sweets with chewy centers
we never tasted before.

With shaking hands, he holds up paper
nearly as crinkled as his ravaged face.
"I hope, " he says in a voice cruelly scraped
"that you will think this sounds okay."
Then he bows his frail head to read
a poem he wrote that rings
with the passion of a soul unflayed
by decades of thick and thin. And the eye
meets the eye of the hurricane
that his life has been.  But fair
he never asked for.  (Good thing!)

Leaving, the poets stop to embrace
a man they now know is big.

(c)  Phyllis Jean Green,  November, 2003