Feeling
for the time
on the clock’s face

*

*

Blind man’s favorite spot:
staring into his door
puffing his pipe

*

*

fingering
the batteries in his transistor radio
again

*

*

adjusting his chair
by the space
to the table

*

*

reading for the blind man
next week’s meals on wheels menu-
his open mouth

*

*

no teeth
the huge mouthfuls
taken

*

*

years of kerosene
fumes deepen
the painting’s window light

*

*

old hands open…
just the glow
of the kerosene stove

*

*

sleep, sit, stand,
stand, sit, sleep
sit, stand, sleep….

*

*

in the now-
always today
fighting off tomorrow-

*

*

Shut in
complaining about life
outside

*

*

“it’s all too big!”
“never quit!”
… the echo…

-tc

a set of little poems I wrote about Willy the Beeman… and my visits with him way back when: sequence written in 1989.

A look back at the wonderful life and times of Bill Danns aka at ‘Willy the Beeman’ or ‘The Honeyman’… He was a legend in his own time , well known and beloved for his throwback to the old ways and how he lived his life on his terms and time, off the grid in a ramshackle house in the little village of Peruville, N.Y.. Willy was best known for the honey he extracted from a set of hives that were on the hillside behind his unpainted tumbly down -at the time- oldest building in Tompkins County, still leaning but standing, at the time… built in 1797 The old Delano Hotel became Bill’s home and was filled with his life stories and remnants. People flocked from near and far to sample Willy’s flower flavors of honey and the hear his  homespun  stories of his life, many of which were told in snippets and were often larger than life tales that grew tall in the listeners imagination filling gaps that Willy left each person spell bound wanting to hear more. I visited Willy for many years in the 1980’s and 1990’s often taking friends out with me to meet this warmly wonderful character and spend some time in the time machine that his house had become. No running water, electricity or heating other than a portable kerosene heater in his bedroom which made winter visits an adventure of sorts but quite cozy in his deeply enchanting bedroom where he had each visitor ‘sign in’ his log book in which he kept a running record of all the many visitors he had from near and far.