Topper by David Gross

I called him “Top Cat”

like the cartoon character, 

he liked it.

We were restoring 

Altgeld Hall 

at the university.

Drinking was his passion

and coupled with a 

finely honed black humor 

everything he said 

came out Shakespearian. 

Born in Liverpool

to an unknown mother, 

his father raised him. 

Gorged with ghosts from 

a childhood zig-zagging 

Europe, working circuses 

with his old man. 

Never said what they did.

One Monday he didn’t show,

no one thought much about it,

but by morning break 

someone tied the name 

nobody knew in the headlines 

to the “drunk little hippie”

that worked with us, 

who laid down 

on a railroad track

and fell asleep.

David Gross is the author of four chapbooks, Cup of Moon (Bull Thistle Press, 2000), What We Never Had (tel-let, 2004), Because It Is (tel-let 2005), and Pilgrimage (Finishing Line Press, 2009). His poems and essays have appeared in journals such as Big Muddy, Blue Collar Review, Cape Rock, Common Ground Review, Hummingbird, Kentucky Review, Modern Haiku, Naugatuck River Review and Snowy Egret. He lives with his wife on a small farm in the hills of southern Illinois.