A Boy Who Grew Up

When I look at the old mans face
Who sits silent at the café
day after day
and occasionally smiles
I don’t see an old man
I imagine the boy he once was
tugging the rim of his mother’s skirt,
dreams of trips to the moon,
or his teenage years,
and how,he must have loved
courting girls,
his long string of moments with them,
how those memories must fill him,
how he must carry them around all day,
It’s all there in his blue eyes set
in skin tugged by gravity,
His freckles trophies of travels to Spain
or someplace warm,
No, I don’t see an old man,
but just a man, who was once a boy
and grew up.