On These Concrete Benches

They used to sit here

These concrete benches

On Malcolm Square

Dad, Uncle Tony, Uncle Fred,

Uncle Bernard

Other uncles

One time I got wind

Of the old men’s conversation

It was about the successes of children

And grandchildren

They wore the crowns as their own

I could see it in the smiles

That showed the creases in their cheeks

At another time

They were raising their chalices

Of childhood memories

I could hear their stories breathing

With lives of their own

Drawing near the characters of the past

In a failed love

Or someone else’s failed love

There was always a story

Set in the years

That have abandoned them

Or which they abandoned

Like they were summoning the past

To be in the present

They used to sit here

On these concrete benches

Uncle Bernard stopped returning

Uncle Tony, too, in 2012

Dad, then Uncle Fred in 2013

Now I see only Uncle Basawil

Talking to an old man

Much younger than him

I am sure the past is with him

Breathing with a life of its own

And I wonder if I will see him again

When I pass this way

Next year