...

.

.

.

the stranger at the top of the hill

.

.

It's unanimously understood, that in small towns

People have a tendency to talk - who and who isn't

Admitted into the ICU, the local rehab, 

The morgue, 

.

Might as well have cause to be public knowledge. 

.

Everyone knows everyone, calls everyone

By their first names, knows where they work,

What they do, where they live,

Are privy to 

.

The qualities that decide 

Each highly individualized

Personality, predispositions,

     Conflict.

.

.

When Tom dislikes Ken

And they have a personal feud, 

The whole town weighs in

And takes their pre-inclined side.

.

When Martha has a baby

Outside of wedlock, 

The problem may as well 

Be brought forward to a panel 

.

And resolved at city hall. 

.

.

But, 

.

Nobody seemed to know anything about the stranger

That'd moved in at the top of Cherry-Hill. 

.

This mystery began as intrigue, but still, 

He rarely came out, and so the intrigue 

Became disappointment, the disappointment

Became resentment, and before long 

.

The town, entire, had all decided that they hated him. 

.

A man they'd never met, vilified

On the simple basis 

That he refused 

To introduce himself - 

.

Refused to participate in the menagerie 

Of local pride, and politics. 

.

I never met him, but I saw him once

Stepping out to check his mail box, 

Big shiner over his cheek, 

A grimace in the jerking motions

.

Of his shuffling, slippered feet.

.

I wondered who he'd been fighting, 

If he fell, if someone had hit him,

And when his eyes met mine, 

Even at a distance - from the bottom 

.

To the top 

Of an otherwise unoccupied hill -  

.

I sensed that there was more to the story

Than a chance encounter, inference,

.

was liable to tell.

.

.

.