People You Meet in a Convenience Store on a Cold January Sunday Morning
By Don Iannone

Freeman, he calls himself.
I asked, and he told me
his amazing story of rebirth and freedom.
His real name: John Sylvester, and
a free man now, after forty-seven long years.
All this I learned while standing in line
at the local convenience store
buying a morning newspaper
on a cold January Sunday morning.
Yes, this was Freeman's first free Sunday,
after spending seventy-five percent of his life
in an Ohio penitentiary.
No, I didn't ask him what he had done.
Why steal away a man's first free Sunday morning
in forty-seven years?