The only thing abrasive about Don Comis as
the rasp I first heard when I called
to enter Greenbelt Homes’ scholarship essay contest
was his beard, kinked and gray like steel wool.
A Vietnam War conscientious objector’s
gentleness emanated from him:
he told of passing a pack of wild dogs
in a field on a West Virginia town’s outskirts
through tai chi’s equanimous strides.
Short and portly, with thinning black hair
and aquamarine eyes beneath acorn-shaped glasses.
A voluble talker—rapid yet hinting
hesitancy, as though doubtful how much
worth you would find in his words,
but too exuberant to refrain from sharing.
Creative Commons, by librariesteam, CC PDM 1.0 (public domain)
§
He ushered me into GHI’s library
to study those Nineteenth-Century English weavers
who pioneered adopting the Musketeers’
motto as their business model, rural utilities,
packaged food giants like Sunkist and Welch’s;
and to the public library’s Rexford Tugwell Room,
named for the New Deal bureaucrat who planned
our garden city, to dig into our grassroots ventures’ lore.
Don even escorted me over the Potomac
to pound Alexandria’s colonial cobblestone pavement
to a long edifice with many doors and one story
that might have once been a boardinghouse
to question a friend who founded a housing co-op—
frantically flipping wirebound pages to
scrannel her answers at her auctioneer’s pace.
§
Awaiting the Metro train afterwards,
that stunning dilation of the moment seared my surroundings
into my soul: the oblong hollows in the tunnel’s
arched concrete ceiling, the “King Street” sign across the track,
the platform’s maroon tiles and anonymous crowd.
The one who acquainted me with the subway
was hardly closer to where we each headed,
but the man with me now had been traveling longer;
he guided me more than kept me company.
I knew Don would abide inside me in this place,
crucial in its slight way to where I’d end up,
not retreat indistinguishable among the background bodies.
In time to come I’d stand here again farther away.
I would find here the man beside me
because he never left me—because he conducted me here.
