Always An Outsider

The railroad crews knew him only as Old Joe.
They would sometimes see him
down by the gully
fishing with an old cane pole
or hear how he'd been found
sleeping in one of the cabins along the line.

Then, for days on end
he'd come around the speeder house at lunch
bringing a can of beans
he's found somewhere.
The men would sit around and talk
and offer tea.

Joe vanished one year
soon after the fall of the first snow.
Spike Soper found him outside a graveyard
down at Come-By-Chance.

Seems he had come into a sizable fortune.
Gave it all to young Reverend Keily.
Made that preacher promise
to give him a decent burial
out there at Plot Hill Cemetery
in a spot Old Joe himself had selected
between the fence and the road.

Lorraine Geiger

First Place: FSPA Annual Contest 1996
Published: Florida State Poets Association Anthology 18