We were confused when he passed
and we learned from his obituary
that he was exactly who we thought he was.
There were no secrets in that life.

He had met all expectations daily.
He had said exactly what he thought.
He had thought exactly what we expected
a moderately average person to think

about moderately average things 
and if there were outliers
among those thoughts
he kept them appropriately to himself. 

In his backyard he kept a fig tree
which bore good purple fruit. 
He would take a few fruits
daily when in season,

leave the rest 
for birds and rats and squirrels 
and us when we were kids;
when we could we’d sneak in to steal

our sticky few, avoiding the wasps
who truly owned the tree, now and then
getting a sly wink from the porch
from Mr. Montressore.

When he died someone bought the home
and cut the fig tree down to put in a pool
and pretty soon we began to whisper
about them and how could they do that?

They must have been from somewhere else.
They must have disliked wasps or joy taken
in a quiet life moderately engaged with neighbors
and garnished by figs.

We whispered about them.
Made up stories about
why they kept to themselves
like monsters.

We learned what we needed to know about
the people who replaced Mr. Montressore
by the sight of a ravished stump 
beyond the far edge of the pool. 

It’s not like it was,
we’d say.
This whole world
is going to hell.