I too, may well have kept on walking; for even in the midst of mid-life crisis and my resolve to be a better man, there was nothing I could do about spilt wine. But as I neared Him, He looked up and within the haggard face His eyes met mine. I could not look away, I slowed my stride and stopped within an arm’s length from Him, taking in somehow the nondescriptiveness of the man. His clothing, not shabby, frayed nor dirty, but telling of a hardness and a well-worn life within. An overcoat, charcoal grey and thinned by time, so that it appeared the man inside warmed it instead. Woolen pantslegs like young and bending saplings stuck out from underneath; His shoes were pricked with holes in some design created in a better time. All this I saw as if in halo that wound around His eyes.
His face was sagging with what I guessed to be a sadness at the broken bottle, and yet His eyes shone with intensity as if within a darkening room a light switch had been flicked; a bare-bulbed locus that blinds and yet still draws you in. Grey-hair with glints of light that caught the sun to sparkle like silver threads adorned his head and matched a beard and mustache that curled as well. I thought of Willie Nelson with his stare of glazed purported wisdom, for there was softness in His look though feverish as well like Charlie Manson’s black piercing and commanding eyes. I felt no fear, no overwhelming sense of madness in them, just a need to stop and take it in.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology