Eye On Life Magazine

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The Waver

If we ever called them retarded, and we probably did,

It would have been in a hushed voice, confronted

We’d say little or nothing, they were the otherness

Around us, sitting in the back row, stringing beads

 

Never reading, never writing, one did the blackboards

After class, I sometimes envied them, especially during

Math class, their simple tasks, their very easy moods

Their ability to sit and fit someone else’s plan for them

 

But, this isn’t about all of them, just the one we called

The waver, he’d come out to the corner of North and

North Willard every afternoon and stand there waving

Sometimes smiling, sometimes blank faced, to the cars

 

Passing by, he never waved to us, just hanging around

The corner store, the harmless street gang he ignored

Mid-afternoon, dozens of cars went by and he’d wave

Some waved back, if they weren’t alone they’d say

 

Something to the person with them, some would laugh

He was the waver waving, whenever we wave it is

Either a greeting or a farewell, but to him the task

Was about the moment, a greeting of sorts, or a call

 

For attention, here I am, look at me, you can’t ignore

Me, I have a role in your life, a part to play, a task

I do so well they call me by it, I am the waver waving

Waving hello, waving goodbye, always a presence

 

After a while an old woman, we assumed was his mother

Would come for him, touch him on the sleeve and say

Something to him, and they’d slowly walk up the street

Home, his day done, his tasks complete for yet another day.

 

 

J. K. Durick