by Andy Fahlgren, '14

The doctor didn’t save him--
his bad heart did.
It sounded wrong and gone
were his dreams of an officer’s life.
So he left home still a boy
to raise sheep, far, far away
from the black plumes of Germany.
It was 1914.

I knew him as a wealthy rangy hermit
with endless pasture and a tiny home
who lived to be almost a hundred.

“All my friends are at the bottom of the Black Sea,”
I heard him say, “every last one
of them drowned.
I’m still out here roaming these hills.
I’m still out here murmuring around.”