Mike of the castles

Mike of the castles - Copy

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"This is the end

Beautiful friend"

(J. Morrison)

who was wispy as his Dean Martin hair and sweetly ingratiating smile

can make Mike, at his Venetian window

turning a prize apple in his hand

for the signora & daughter he greets as do all the stoop-shouldered--

as does Mike (alone!)-- a proud grocer

reduced to a bloodied apron of a man.

I sensed, too, the elegant shiny storefront self would be gutted, stormed

by something like a lost wife and son

(obvious even to my childhood sense),

that made Mike my own personal guide to the charred steely gaze, years later

of his defeated castle, the empty

nameless unswept streets and skies

_________

Haibun

Mike always greeted us, at the entrance to his Venetian Market store, with his Dean Martin hair and sweetly ingratiating smile. His butcher's trade made him a little stoop-shouldered The bloodied apron he always wore made storeowner and trade one and the same