Day after day

Come whatever weather

You will finding him sitting there

On the second stair.

Dressed always in denim and casual shirts

Holding himself

As if he were dressed all

In pristine white silk.

He has sat there more years

Than I have been alive

They say

But he looks not a day older now

Than when I was but five.

Every day at the same time

He walks to the pavement

Checks left and right.

Walks over the road and buys himself

A sandwich.

And returns to sit

On the courthouse steps.

Never says a word.

Not once in my seventeen years

Have I once heard him speak

But he nods to all that bid him good day.

I lay awake in bed at nights

And wonder how many cases and lawyers

And their clients

Have passed him by.

He must have seen

Triumph and success

And failure and its retribution.

There is a sign

On the wall of the courthouse

To the martyrs that died there

So very many years ago.

Maybe he is paying them homage.

And I was walking one day

And he was not there

And there stood three members of the court

And they looked too sorrowed for words.

That whole day all that went to and from the courthouse

Looked sad and confused.

No one was there to nod to their good mornings

And there was a section of step no one walked on.

He was part of the furniture

As right and suited as a churches gargoyles

And just as immoveable.

Gone, and never seen again.

These days

Twenty years on

I lie awake at night

And wonder what his name was.

- On the Courthouse Steps