Under The 4th Avenue Bridge

As I walk past under the 4^th Avenue bridge,

I always see a man reading some kind of book.

Laying on his back of the inclined concrete floor,

He’s so into the story that he doesn’t take a look,

 

I don’t know what it is about this raggedy, old man,

I would assume he has entered the mid-50’s range,

Though the dirt and the beard make it hard to tell,

The difference between him and others is strange,

 

There seems to be some sort of confidence to him,

A confidence that none of the others seem to show,

What is the story that this man is holding inside him,

Whatever that story is �" I really want to know,

 

The next day as I passed by the 4^th Avenue bridge,

The old man did not appear to be reading on the ground,

It made me stop and talk a look around the place,

This man I did not know is nowhere to be found,

 

Why is it that I wonder where this man could be,

Is it possible that I search for his story far too late,

What has this man really done to grab my attention,

Why is it that I stayed and waited until it was too late,

 

I continued to take that past for a few more weeks,

That man that grabbed my attention never did return,

But I grabbed another’s attention as I went by daily,

She had asked me what it is that I wanted to learn,

 

She noticed I used to be excited when I went by there,

Like I was beginning to learn a whole new way to live,

Then something begin to change over the past few weeks,

I had stopped showing that joy I had always seemed to give,

 

I had told here there was a man that seemed different,

One who didn’t seem to fit with the rest of pack,

The one who seemed to do the same thing every day,

The one who just laid there reading the book on his back,

 

She said that she knows exactly who I am talking about,

Saying that his name happened to be Jason Monroe,

That I was right that he wasn’t the same as everyone else,

He was a man that everybody there loved to know,

 

Jason was not one who lived under the 4^th Avenue bridge,

He happened to be wealthy with a daughter and a son,

Every day he would come and play games for us to enjoy,

And then give us a special meal once somebody had won,

 

You always passed by when we were all eating the meal,

He used that time to read over his work for the day,

Jason was more than just somebody who stopped to say hi,

He gave us enjoyment in a completely different way,

 

Why Jason stopped appearing is something nobody knows,

But they don’t waste the time to wonder why he does not,

They knew he spent just a little bit of time with them,

And couldn’t ask for anything more than his love is all they got.