A Piece of NONSENSE POETRY! Titled Upon the Stair, I Met a Man Who Wasn't There Jill
jill stockinger
Jill Stockinger
Upon the Stair, I Met A Man Who Wasn't There
Among us are those who are not there and yet they are everywhere. They
have unique and varied abilities at camouflaging, but one is still somehow
too aware, in some nonspecific way, that they are, generally as unobtrusively
as possible on their part, there. Sometimes, they hover above or sink into the
background, though some are known to favor hanging out on certain stairs,
and this has been known to give some people, or perhaps just one, no end of
bother. Mostly or not really, they want to be ignored or to be acknowledged
in an offhand sort of way, but never directly. They seem to move around a lot,
here and there, so you can count on them in inexplicable ways, but you can
never count on them when it would really count, being as unreliable as time
and just as ubiquitous, even if they are camouflaged as the air we are breathing
or the road on which we are driving our car. Sometimes their groans will betray
their presence and that makes everyone very uncomfortable, to say the least.
They will then, if aware that we are aware of their indiscretion, make ghastly
sorts of burping sounds and sometimes hollow thumping noises, all of which
most of us have learned to blame on the dog, even when there is no dog, so
civility is maintained until, one way or multiple ways, we're not there–unless
it turns out, we are!
Antigonish
by William Hughes Mearns
Yesterday, upon the stair,
I met a man who wasn't there
He wasn't there again today
I wish, I wish he'd go away...
When I came home last night at three
The man was waiting there for me
But when I looked around the hall
I couldn't see him there at all!
Go away, go away, don't you come back any more!
Go away, go away, and please don't slam the door... (slam!)
Last night I saw upon the stair
A little man who wasn't there
He wasn't there again today
Oh, how I wish he'd go away...