Ernest Campbell

Ernest Campbell
was never going to amount to much.
‘Drop out’, ‘Screw up’
had become like catch phrases.
He wasn’t voted “Most Likely to Succeed,”
His walls weren’t lined with blue ribbons.
He didn’t have much, but he
was happy, with just his wife and his van.

The children of Sprucewood St.
didn’t have much to look forward to.
The broken shutters and swollen doors
were nothing but normal to them.
They played on the hard asphalt of the road
outside their homes that seemed to lead to nowhere,
but they made it beautiful with
chalk drawings and Double-dutch rhythms.
They didn’t have much, but the promise
of a tinkling tune every afternoon was enough.

Their cries and shouts as their bare feet hit the
hot, hard pavement were as beautiful to him
as the repetitive, plunking tune was to them.
Their small, grubby hands reach through the small
window, surrounded by plastered pictures of their
favorites. Powerpuff girls with bubblegum eyes.
Bombpops with rainbow stripes. They reach in, he
reaches out, his calloused hands so much larger than theirs.
He hands them out, laughing. Their gap-toothed smiles
match his, his eyes crinkling. And for his two-hour shift
down Sprucewood street, Ernest Campbell
the ice cream man amounts to everything.