Ok, first one up

Suddenly I heard a familiar voice…

I walked up to this sign post and began the installation when suddenly I heard a familiar voice that I hadn’t heard in a while. A person watering plants on his front lawn, who I didn’t even notice was there, was greeting me. It was (sorry, can’t remember his name) that really nice guy who used to work in my building until he had a stroke. He asked be what I was doing. I told him, “it’s an art project.” He looked quizzical as he shrugged it off, as if to say, ok, if you say so. He told me he was on disability. That it wasn’t good. But what could he do. He asked me if I liked his hair, to which I hesitatingly replied with an unsure “sur-r-re”, until he proclaimed, “I dye it. Five times. You need to do it five times”, holding up the hand that wasn’t gripping the hose, “slowly, a little darker each time”. “See”, he gestured as he pulled back the clump of hair that covered his hairline,” it looks good, huh?”. “Uhhh-huh”, I responded, a little but not much more convincing than the first time I answered.

As I tightened the last hex nut I thought about asking him to shoot this picture with me standing next to the sign, but saw he had left to water the plants in his backyard.

This was really the first installation test. The poem is not one of the selected poems, but one that I wrote as a sample for the proposal and which I had a prototype made prior to the final selections, for testing and in particular to test the installation hardware and the installation process.