TheBanyanTree: What I Learned from Eddie Mittler

[paul]

I

What I learned from Eddie Mittler
begins in a backwater burg
next to Rattlesnake Gulch
where we were stranded, me with 
crazed people and a drunk, him 
with a normal family 
who behaved themselves

I was always sad and anxious, 
he was always happy and smiling
a disposition sweet as a well-fed 
baby's, he was a boy scout in a fraternity 
jacket, a party-boy with lovely manners, a deep well 
of kindness; masses of contradictions and I always remembered him 
as a point of relief in a gloomy, hellish parade of days.


II

Last night, I learned that Eddie died, a year ago
Thanksgiving, while families celebrated bounty and 
togetherness, Eddie shivered in seizures after
walking away from detox where he drank long into 
his short future and nature trounced nurture.




LLDeMerle