Thomas

Whan April had, with his uncertain sun,
Stirred in the streets a warmth both kind and spare,
It fell upon a day of common run
That Thomas, clerk of modest coin and care,
Did miss his bus and so was made to fare
Afoot, with time too long and thoughts too loud,
Toward home, beneath a sky both thin and cloud.

This Thomas was no knight nor pilgrim sworn,
But keeper of accounts and weekday meals,
A man who paid his rent and rose each morn
With neither dream too sharp nor grief that peals.
Yet in his breast there slept what life conceals:
A wish unvoiced, unmeasured, and unsure,
To know what end his careful days procure.

As thus he walked, he met a woman gray,
Not bent with age, but gathered, as one who knows.
Her coat was old; her shoes had lost their way
From fashion's rule; her eyes were quick as crows'.
She hailed him soft: "Good sir, thy pace yet slows.
Wilt thou a tale, to shorten this thy mile?
For words, well-spent, may cheat the road awhile."

Thomas, who had been raised to answer kind,
Inclined his head and matched her humble stride.
She spoke of men who counted all they'd mined
Of hours and years, till joy was set aside;
Of women too, who waited, dignified,
For life to knock, and, knocking, pass them by,
Because they feared to bid it enter nigh.

"But one," quoth she, "did risk his reckonèd lot,
And spent a day as though it were his last.
He sang too loud, he wept, he kept the pot
Aboil for friends both present and long past.
When night had come, he found himself aghast—
Not dead, as feared, but living, twice as deep,
For what we spend in courage, that we keep."

Here paused the woman, and the street grew wide.
The traffic thinned. The shops had shuttered fast.
Thomas, who felt a turning tide inside,
Would thank her, but she smiled and forward passed.
"No debt," she said. "Thy hearing pays it past.
Remember this, when next thy days seem thin:
Life asks not thrift, but daring, now and then."

And with that word, she turned a corner bare
And was no more, though Thomas hurried on.
He stood alone, yet strangely un-despair'd,
As bells rang six, and daylight all but gone.
He missed his bus again, but thought it none
Ill luck, for walking home, he felt, at last,
That even common roads may hold a cast
Of meaning, if one spends them, not too fast.