On Fridays He’d Open A Six-Pack Of Beer Poem by Gert Strydom

On Fridays he’d open a six-pack of beer,
after coming home
would tear the wrapping from them,
and sit on the porch with his white vest
stretching over his huge chest
and there were distant thoughts in his eyes,
long forgotten memories coming back,
sweat running down his face and cheeks

and the foam of icy Castle Lager was on his lips
and the silence had a funny way
of talking to me,
telling things about heartache, chances lost,
while he was trying to chill out

and the man in vest and shorts
drinking his bear on the porch,
I couldn’t really comprehend
and the blue tattoos on his arms
told their own stories
of a converted hippie, a man converted
to the responsibilities of life,

and he was convinced
that my stories, my poems
would not lead anywhere
and I saw a man
who had lost
the words, the poems
that he once wrote

and he watched the setting sun,
the awakening stars
trying to catch the magic
of the moment.