SOME NONSENSE

The Man in Mourning



I saw him kneeling there, grasping a tall, thin wooden post with a crooked cross piece, all of it entwined with dead and dying vines.  There were others nearby much like it.  As I watched him, I noticed a tear dripping from his cheek on occasion.  He was an older gentleman, his face wrinkled and brown from the sun.  I walked up to him and asked if I could be of any help.  “No”, he said, “I can do it…it was me who put them here.”  With that he grasped the gnarled, weathered stick and it’s cross bar and flung it angrily to the side. I put my arm across his drooping shoulders and tried to offer my condolences.  As he reached for another shabbily constructed cross, he said.  “I shouldn’t feel this way,” he said, “Next summer I can come out here and reuse these same stakes.  “And there will be more tomatoes next year!  It is just so hard to see them go and know how long I will be without them!!”

L.A.D.