Gave me a ride to school one day
when I was thumbing a ride at age 16.
I recall remembering what a nice guy
he was.
Not long after that he shot a salesman
to death in a store robbery.
In prison he got a degree, became a poet
and seemed a model prisoner
until he escaped with another prisoner
and a guard was killed, not sure if he did it.
He wasn’t found till twenty years later.
He’d been living in the open in Chicago
doing poetry readings with a poetry group,
and his poetry was quite good.
He attended a church, did volunteer work for it.
His twenty year escape ended when he won
poet of the month at the Chicago poetry group,
and a police officer saw his photo in the news.
He died not long ago on a medical parole,
and I will never understand how my cousin
Norman Porter could have had the soul of
a poet and the darkness of a killer.
Bob Boyd