A huge rat hid in the woodpile behind Billy’s house,
Also magenta hued worms, multi-limbed insects, and an occasional slimy snail with petite ears
Mornings Billy and I flipped over the weathered wooden planks to wake everybody
Speculating on where the little creatures came from,
what they ate, and what they might be thinking
Transported us to enchanted ventures,
On a schooner sailing the oceans, a long shiny limousine driving to posh resorts, an airplane playing tag with the clouds
Billy had a ‘specimen cart’
On collection days we chatted about matters of moment
Where the clouds came from and their ever changing shapes and colors
and how robins knew where the worms were
Billy said I could learn about life just by watching wild things,
How they took everything in stride, just as it came, and never acted out of spite
I was six and Billy was sixty
He wasn’t very tall
He didn’t shave very often and bathed even less
He always wore a floppy old brown hat and held up his pants with a rope
My mother said he was a rustic cavalier,
But she wished I wouldn’t go on so many jaunts with him
The more charitable of our neighbors referred to him as the town eccentric
Others called him an old bum
I adored him
He taught me to spit farther than anyone else
He lit up my imagination like a Roman candle
He introduced me to philosophical musings
He drew me into the art of true conversation
He listened to me
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