I.
We had lunch today,
Carlos and me,
an unlikely pair;
a retired academic, he –
Doc-tor de Español, if you please,
though he doesn’t really give a whit –
while just a bachelor, me,
and a commercial hack, as well.
Yet we see things much the same,
how affairs might otherwise be
to make the world a little more sane.
II.
We’d met several times before
but commonalities divulged
only recently, breaking fast –
weekly as a rule –
with a batch of old codgers
pissed about politicians and polls.
So we had lunch today;
over gyros and fries, we
talked history and poetry.
We both write it, you see, Carlos and me.
III.
He once recited to the table,
the misanthropes gathered ’round,
about a poorly-paid professor
with a fancy forbidden roadster
on New England byways of yesteryear.
“Oh….” they said, staring
at pancakes and scrambled eggs,
lost for words, never mind appreciation.
I waited, thinking he might take another run
at el toro back in a Spanish ring, or
another windmill under a firebrand sun.
IV.
We talked El Cordobés and Franco’s war
from a loaner biography loaned in turn.
Never give up a friend
who lives to read, reads to live
and loans books, as well.
But now he prepares to move on,
taking with him his books and poems.
¡Vaya con Dios, Señor! ¡Buena suerte! too
in all your righteous quests;
may the wind be ever at your back
and a new muse o’er every crest.
V.
On my way out I pass his metal steed,
the plate: “QUIXOTE” –
or was it “Cervantes,” after all?
Myth or man, it matters not,
nor el mundo entero with their dusty yellow plates;
these epic battles,
these heroic pursuits,
for us shall be forever true.
Don Carlos smiles, recites another stanza;
I listen, rapt, just grateful to be
his simple Sancho Panza.
© 2024 Martin C. Fredricks IV
A representation of silhouettes of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza.- vector illustration
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