I remember Del Wiese

I mentioned Del Weise in the previous piece, and now I'll tell more about him. I don't know how many times I revised this poem, a word here or a phrase there, never getting it right. This is where it stands now, and maybe I'll go back to it again.

Del Wiese

Del Wiess? Dell Weiss? How do you spell his name?

It matters to me. If I can’t spell his name correctly—his name, the way he spelled it, the name his mother and father gave him—how can I describe to you who Del Wiess was without feeling guilty?

Del’s breath.

I remember Del’s breath.

Even now, so many years later,

when I catch a hint of that particular moist,

stale,

slightly acrid odor, I remember Del. 

Del’s legs.

I remember Del’s legs.

Del’s legs were different

than my eight-year-old legs or my brother’s six-year-old legs. Del’s legs were thin

and motionless. His pants hung over his

bent knees and his immobile legs like a tarp thrown over a pile of sticks.

Del’s hands.

I remember Del’s hands.

The skin on Del’s hands was smooth and pale and shiny, as transparent

as a seashell held up to faint light.

Del’s hands were awkward and could do none of the things

my hands could do; simple things, like lifting a straw to sip

cool lemonade on a hot summer day.

Del’s shirts.

I remember Del’s shirts.

Long-sleeved, crisply creased

and cuffed,

always like new. There was no movement to fray the cuffs,

no perspiration to stain the tightly woven

cotton.

Del’s wit.

I remember Del’s wit.

He made us laugh with his jokes and the sparkle in his eyes.

Del was playful; Del was intelligent and clever. Del was in his twenties and

his life was in a wheelchair on the front lawn of his home when

the weather was kind--a place where he would watch the world with intense curiosity, and where people

who didn’t know him would drive by and stare,

curious themselves… about Del.

Del Wiess. I remember Del Wiess.

Revised 7/2/06 and after, many times

Postlude:

A six-block stretch of Huron Avenue was my neighborhood when I was a child. I lived at the start of the street, and Del Wiese lived a block away, next to my good friend Tookie Esklund.  I know now that Del was a paraplegic, perhaps from an accident when he was young --although my brother Mark’s friend Ted insists that Del was a fighter pilot and was injured in a plane crash! Del must have been in his early 20's when Mark and I spent time with him, but we never asked his age. What I knew then was that Dell lived in a wheelchair, often sitting in the shade of his front yard on warm summer days, and that his mother was devoted to his care. Del piqued our curiosity at first because of our fascination with his wheelchair, and later he captured us completely by his humor and his storytelling. I will never know for sure how Del knew so many stories in such detail, but since a book often lay open in his lap, I imagine he was a reader.