Ronnie’s Song

I saw him on the front row
He always sat there alone
Ronnie was a scarecrow
Down at heel, boho
Aficionado
Of anything Broadway
Bernstein and Sondheim
Kept loneliness at bay

Stumbling through the town with coins in hand
To bank them for a conversation
Cashier lifts her eyes to heaven
Ronnie had low expectations

A person is a person
It makes no odds to me
A person is a person
Just like you and me

Derelict, frozen
Sleeping under filth
Wounded, feral
But strangely seraphic

Walls thronged with stars
Of the Music Hall
Though the person that saved him
An ordinary girl

Once a little boy, a mother's son
Light on his feet, his father told him
Don't do things like that round here
Filled with moral apprehension

Breaking of bread and drinking wine
For once he had a shared communion
Chose to spend her Christmastime
With someone viewed as barely human