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 self would be gutted, cruelly stormed

by something like a lost wife and son

(obvious even to my childhood sense),

that made Mike... and the charred steely front, years later of his defeated

castle, empty gutted and unswept as the 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