Jerry Garcia in a Somerville Parking Lot
Editor’s Note: This poem by Lloyd Schwartz is being presented as part of our special focus on poetry during #PoetryMonth in April. Please read our introduction to the series.
Past midnight, a man in his late 60s, tall, with long
gray hair and a bushy gray (almost white) beard,
returns to the side street public parking lot
where he’d left his car. It’s hot, and dark, and the lot
is unlit. At the far end he can make out two men
smoking, leaning against the car right next to his.
Alone and apprehensive, he starts across the lot, and
soon catches a whiff of what they’re smoking.
Suddenly one of them asks:
“Want to hear a joke?”
Startled, he hesitates, but obliges. “Sure,” he says.
“What’s the joke?” “OK: What do you call a woman
with only one leg?” “I don’t know,” he plays along.
“What do you call a woman with only one leg?”
“Eileen.”
It takes him a second, he almost groans, and then
begins to laugh.
“Want a drag?” the guy asks. He’s just a kid
(the other one never says a word). “No, no thanks,”
the man answers, “I can inhale from here.”
This time it’s the kid who laughs. “OK. I only asked
because you look like Jerry Garcia.
—Have a nice night!“
“You too,” the man answers, unlocking his car.
“Thanks.” And all the way home, he keeps chuckling
at lucky escapes, wildly mistaken identities, sweet
dumb jokes (how little it takes to restore his
affection for the city), and at least for the moment
gratefully alive, can’t stop laughing—or laughing at
himself for laughing—at his latest temporary reprieve.
Reprinted with permission from Little Kisses by Lloyd Schwartz, published by the University of Chicago Press.
© 2017 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.
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