The Barber in the Dell
remembering childhood summers by the sea
Who wore a green plastic visor
the color of a ginger ale bottle.
Who had a raspy voice
and Charles Coburn kind
of face. A forever bachelor
who wore spectacles
he could barely see through,
which is why he sometimes
clipped your ear
with his quick silver scissors.
Whose name was the same
as the sign on the window
by the striped pole: Dell’s.
Whose small, single-story shop
and sole chrome-and-leather chair
sat between the shingled houses
facing Twilight Lake,
in the town by the sea
where my boyhood summers
swam; where my mother
brought my young head
of sunblond hair to be cut
now and then by the green–
visored old barber
in that dell.
Colin Goedecke
remembering childhood summers
in Bay Head, New Jersey
December 2017
