Mona Lisa Poem by Troy Cochran

An old man on his deathbed
With his brooding kin
Elbowed in about him,
Bowing heads in shameful thought
Of little secret sins
Held in
So as not to shatter his illusions
Of so many friends;

A shriveled man of poverty;
Of no great name;
No single claim of even one
Small thing
To crow about; a pen
That scribbled out a history of himself
In trite poetry, still held him
By his bony hand; no other;

His final legacy
A dying breath
Imparted to this portrait of his
Dying friends.

He alone among them grinned.