By Jim Reese
Peculiar and quiet, from a broken home,
George spent summer afternoons watching me
tear down what was left of a fallen barn
to make room for another of those enormous gardens
his adoptive parents wouldn't share with anyone.
George helped me pick up the pieces
by hand. Held the salvageable two-by-sixes
on sawhorses as I hammered out
every last rusted nail.
Almost every afternoon he did this.
Then he'd be gone for days at a time.
The curtains would be pulled
at the renters place — the sound of piano keys — redundant
chord progressions
and John Thompson techniques
echoing in the air.
And on these days
I always thought it was wrong.
George not around — cooped up
in that stuffy house,
forced in to some sort of
homegrown recital.
*****
When the barn was done
And I returned to graduate school
I forgot about George.
Two years later on the local news
I see a picture of the house,
the two gardens gone to weeds
and a reporter tells me
about the adoptive parents,
arrested for tying
the child to his bed for days
on end — feeding him
homegrown habanera peppers.
All this education, I think,
and I never stopped once to ask him
if everything was okay.
