Skinny

“Your boy,” they said, “is skinny like your dad.”
I nodded and considered images
Of my old man from twenty years ago
When he was my age.  Now I’m his,
And here’s this boy mixed up in time with me,
Skinny as a ghost resurrected
Making someone think of someone he
Had never known.  “Like who?” he asked,
“Who am I like?”  And everybody smiled
And started telling stories of a man
Who used to be.  “But not like me,” I said,
“Skinny skipped a generation,”
Leaving me with all these memories
Of looking at a man as old as the hills
And this reality: my little boy
As young as I had ever been,
Now looking up at me with skinny eyes.