Old Man Evans

Sea by VardasTouch _{(Credit: DeviantArt)}

Originally written January 8th, 2023. Inspired by David Gilmour’s “Yes, I Have Ghosts”

It had been 1822 for far too long.
Then, Captain Evans loved a doting heiress so purely.
He built her a stately house of brick with windows that overlooked the ocean.
Captain Evans was the first to put his shoulder to the wheel when a job needed doing,
Be it building schools or repairing ships after a storm. 
And good Captain Evans stayed to tend to the house and the town,
To let his wife sail home and care for her ailing mother.
But her ship would never reach its home shores,
So, Captain Evans became the Old Man.

Over the years, the house began to decay, but he remained untouched by time,
caught in between his youthful charm and the sage wisdom of a man who lost everything.
A waterfall of grey tumbled down the back of his head,
And a matching beard hid the twists of a face contorted in anguish and rage.
His eyes remained sharp and vivid, his back never bent.
He remained unbowed in the face of his worst storm.
Old Man Evans watched the horizon, silently begging his wife’s ship to appear in the distance,
But he was always met with only the sounds of the ocean kissing the shore
the way a lover kisses one whose body is present while their mind drifts far away.

The town’s children grew older, had their own families, and began to forget Evans.
Yet the Old Man remained an unchanging testament to ages past,
through the fight of brother against brother, the war to end all wars, and the new dawn after.
And now, Old Man Evans still doesn’t look that old as he walks into town for food,
dressed in a navy peacoat and a grey knitted sweater,
a weather-beaten Captain’s hat on his head, and a cigar in his hand.
In a way, he seems to have broken free of the tide of time,
Resigned to longingly gazing out to a horizon which offers no hope.

His history is now nothing more than whispers,
a tall tale of a perpetually separated love cursed to walk among mortals forever,
The way the ocean wipes away declarations of love scrawled into the sand.
Still, he has always been here, beyond mortality.

It has been 1822 for far too long,
Decades whiled away staring out at the ocean
In the way ordinary people waste only minutes.
Old Man Evans had nothing to do but let time pass him by,
Searching for the answer to a prayer the gods never heard.