What’s A Few Years?

Ed Galing

You wake up
one morning
and you are feeling
good
you are ninety years old
live alone without
a wife
and take care of yourself
and most of the time
you are in a bad mood
old age makes you that way
today is different for you
the sun is shining
through your window
and last night you
had no aches or
pains while sleeping
you have a kind of
new feeling
like nothing bad can
happen
today you feel like
you can do anything
the air is good
and you feel thirty
what’s a few
years anyway?
you smile as you
step out of bed, miss
and stumble
your toe.

Among Those Missing
By Ed Galing

Tony was a little
Italian man
who was a cobbler
by trade;
he lived around the
corner from me
and i always took my
beat up old shoes
to him for new heels,
tony came from
italy where he
learned his trade;
he was small
and bent over
and his face
had pock marks,
whenever i went
to see him
he would be working
on a lathe,
holding up a
pair of shoes,
or he would be banging
nails on heels
without missing
a stroke;
he carried a bunch of
small nails in
his mouth,
spitting them out
one at a time;
when he saw me
his eyes would light
up and he would say
-time for new
heels again?
yeah, tony, i would
say, i do
a lot of walking
looking for a job;
-fix you right up
tony would say
come back next week;

tony is gone
the shop is closed
no one brings
shoes to tony anymore.
i don’t know what
happened to him.
that’s how it goes
sometimes.

the roof
by Ed Galing

where i went every
day in the summer
time
away from the crowded
streets and the
fire escapes
up here i nestled
among underwear
blowing in
a breeze
hanging on a
line with
clothes pins,
in the summer time
you could see
for miles if
you stood at
the edge of the
roof and looked
far out
almost seeing the
hudson river
and the brooklyn bridge
this was the closest
i could hope to be
away from everyone.

Ed Galing is 94 years old. He is the Poet Laureate of Hatboro, Pennsylvania. He writes his poetry on an old typewriter. He misses his wife who passed away 4 years ago. He knows she reads his poetry from heaven.