The Wandering Man

He was older

Wild hair bleached white with age

The face of a sage

With restless eyes and worn out shoes

His overcoat stretched down to his ankles

Patched over yet always frayed

Emblazoned with the foreign dirt of distant lands

A thousand stories tucked in it's seams

He was too poor to eat

And too proud to beg

Too old to work

And to young to die

He carried nothing but his years

And his stories

Spending his entire life

Making just enough to survive tomorrow

He would sit at the counter in the Drug Store

Watching the world slowly shuffle by

Offering up a piece of his soul

For twenty five cents a shard

He would tell of the distant lands

That lie beyond the drug stores and cheap motels

He would tell of the people too

The kind that dressed funny and didn't smell like tobacco

Sometimes the stories were light and funny

Sometimes dark and heavy

But he would never tell you which

So you couldn't pick out all the funny ones

And you could watch him as he painted

Splattering the air with a thousand carefully chosen words

Dotting all of the stars with a wink

And raising mountains with a cleared throat

And for a quarter and a smile

He would tell you as many as you could hold

Before they started dancing in your head

And you could see them too

Then when night started to fall

He would sit up straight in his chair

And tell of the ghosts that hid in the mirrors

And the creatures that lurked in every shadow

And on those nights we walked home together

Doing our best to hide our fears

Swear never to go back there

Then scrounge up tomorrow's quarter

Day in and day out

Searching back alleys for lost change

Watching as the days passed by

From behind the drug store window

And then one day

He was gone

Just as he had came

Dusty boot prints on an open road

And somewhere out there was another drug store

And another group of wayward kids

Crowding around his feet

Quarters in hand

And maybe then

He would sit back

A brand new hole in his jacket

And he would tell them a story

He would tell them of the far away people

Who smelled like cigarettes and lived in cheap motels

And of the little kid with the wandering stare

Who sat alone and stared at a desolate road

And promised never to forget him.