New Bohemians

He stands in the middle of the cobblestone street in a light misty rain people move past him and perceptively lean away as he reaches one of his books toward them. A very few give him money sometimes he doesn’t take it but let him take a book. At first I think he might be passing out religious tracts, but I would rather not think that, it just doesn’t seem the way he’s moving, dressed, he has a poet’s demeanour. I’d like to think that they’re his own poems his own work of a lifetime. The books are dog eared; he’s been trying to sell them for a very long time, years, a lifetime. His spirit is as gray as his coat; it is dark wool and he wears a Tam O’shanter cap he lifts and re-sets as another potential pretends he is not there. He moves slowly but purposefully as he goes back into a doorway. He sits there and sorts through his books maybe deciding on a different one to take out that might attract attention, one he has tried before. Young girls stride past, show bellybuttons, creamy skin, carrot hair and tattoos, eyes ahead or down at the great unreal world in their hand. It’s a bellybutton year here in Ukraine; perhaps a positive sign for hope against the aggressor. Delivery boys on bicycles slalom around him, purposeful walkers glance, curious; more look away. His beard is white; he moves carefully but quickly: there must be something in those books, in that life. I should go and find out. But I don’t want to know. I don’t want to know what he was like as a baby as a young man, as he grew into manhood and why it’s important to him to let people see what he has labored onto the page. I do wonder where he will sleep tonight. He waves a book weakly at each passer, loose in his hand from dropped wrist to attract a glance at a title, or at his dark rough hands, another story. A couple stop and look, they pick something and hand it to their small son. He looks at it for a long time and hands it to his mother. Maybe someday he will read it, and remember. They took a selfie with the old man in the background as he goes back to his doorway and sorts through his books, again. He turns to look at street to see if he’s missed anybody. The mist has stopped. He pulls a scrap of bread from a bag and he throws it out for the pigeons. He looks up and down the street to see if anybody’s coming close. I wonder and I wonder and I want to keep wondering. I don’t want to know. Maybe I don’t want to know because I too am an old man and I have written things that no one has read. Maybe I should be standing on the cobblestones offering my scribbles to strangers.