I see children on the next street over
walking to school on this fall day,
and I find myself back at Whitney Elementary,
where I can see its shiny floors, buffed
day after day by this smiling giant
of a custodian whose name, against all odds,
was Herbie, a man who held himself
straight as an arrow, as if he were still
in the Navy as he swept and mopped
and ran the electric buffer with cleaning solution
that still hangs in my nostrils, and,
as he worked, he hummed and sang all the while.
I’ll always remember the time he sang along
with us during our fifth-grade chorus rehearsal—
his basso profundo adding weight
to our thin changing voices as we warbled,
“Tie a yellow ribbon ‘round the ole oak tree . . .”
It was ridiculous and unexpectedly beautiful,
and I love those moments and those memories..
