A widower for 20 years,
at 88 he lived alone
and sat without TV or tears
in the front room of his own home.

His grandson asked him if he read
the books nearby on dust-free shelves,
or called his daughters. “No,” he said,
“They have enough problems themselves.”

“I mainly take a backward view
of past, of people, understand?
I think of things I can’t tell you.
You’d call me a dirty old man.”

His housekeeper said he asked her
once if she’d go to bed with him.
He smiled when she said she was sure
her husband’s view of that was dim.

– Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL, May 21, 2014.