visions of leo

leo would wake between four and five in the morning, after catching a few hours of uneasy sleep...unshowered, unshaved, unwashed...he would start his morning...a thermos full of coffee, and the keys to the white van in the yard was all he needed...stained and ragged he would begin another day, full of garage doors and good deeds...leo, didn't drink in a daily regimen that would befit someone with such a life...no he would wait six months and then go on a two week bender fueled by home-made wine...he would chase us around the kitchen with a red hot poker warmed by the wood-fire of an antique stove, and then would give up and sleep on the kitchen floor, next to that same antique cauldron of warmth...and we loved him for it...he was the authentic, and uncorrupted human...balls out in the flesh...something we could never be...and today i see him rarely...but when i do he shakes himself from sleep, sits up from his musty-smelling easy chair, and welcomes me...he misses me like i miss him...we are all suckers for the past, all slaves to memory...so when i do see him, i join him in a glass or two of wine, an old western on the telly, and a silent evening teeming with the past...