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By Don Langford Patching a crack in the walkway, filling a small hole in his house with cement, returning a cup of soil to a hole left in the ground by squirrels, the old man, my landlord, works patiently. The world’s calamities can wait; he harvests the tomatoes that he planted from seed, waters the impatiens that grow in fullest bright color by his porch, turns the earth and worms in his garbage can of rich dark soil. He will disappear some days with his fishing pole and box of floaters and sinkers, and a lunchbox; he will disappear with the squirrel cage that he uses to relocate squirrels to other wooded places, perpetually moving each generation that moves into our neighborhood. He will disappear and the world that never knew he was here will be smaller because of his disappearance. He will leave no big mark that he was here; he tends to his lawn, removing the weeds each spring and fall, the humblest of souls taking the littlest portions from this world and returning them back to the earth, working deliberately and slowly, keeping his little part of the world from falling apart. © Copyright 2004, Don Langford, All Rights Reserved. |
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Document last modified on: 09/28/2004