My Gentleman Friend

By Peter Wonson

Every day for more than a decade I took the same road
to work in the morning, and home again in the evening.
My route passed by a fenced pasture whose only denizen
was a handsome, four-legged gentleman.

The road passed so close to the field I could for a brief
moment study the stallion’s eyes and stolid face,
and almost read his mind – while wondering
if he could read mine.

Through every season, in every kind of weather,
that regal horse was a constant, seeming
not to change at all, or if so imperceptibly.
Two dozen times if once I vowed to stop by the fence.

I believed we’d both enjoy and profit from a conversation.
But … hurry and human impediments intervened
and I never did stop.
Then one day the gentleman was gone.

Peter Wonson is a Minnesota native who has lived in Roanoke since 1981. He earned A.B. and M.A.L.S. degrees from Dartmouth College and was a secondary school educator until retirement. In 2011 he published a book about his years in the music business: Old Times, Good Times: a rock and roll story.