Dissection

During the summers I would visit my uncle.
He would always drink Budweisers from the can
And walk around his front yard
In a pair of old shorts and wifebeaters
Stained with sweat, motor oil and
The aforementioned beer.

He was perversely comic.
Once, he held two frogs in his hand
And said to me,
“How can you tell if a frog’s a boy or a girl?”
I said, quite truthfully, that I did not know.
Upon that response, he turned both frogs over
And laughed, in his drunken way,
With a glory that Prometheus would have
Been proud to share.
I could see in his eyes
How he reveled in his self-proclaimed genius,
Thinking that his proclamation had changed
My whole perspective on life
And shattered everything I believed in.

Once he asked, “If a tree falls in the woods,
Does it make a sound?”
With such hushed reverence
It was clear he felt he deserved a Nobel
Prize for asking the question.
I wanted to say, "If a fat old man
Hell bent on drinking his life away
In his front yard said something
Incredibly stupid just to impress a child,
Does he make a sound?"
But being young, I held my tongue.

I think he’s dead now.