a buckskin coat and boots,
and landed in our town one night
He'd sit alone at Jack's Café
And doodle wild equations
when my best friend said he'd seen
Him talking with three well -dressed Arabs
The next day in his mailbox
was a wounded rattlesnake
The waitress at the donut shop
said his name was Robert Smith
At least that's what he told her
when he left her a big tip
But Sam McGuire was what she saw
on his card that said for hire
If he was Robert Smith, she said,
then who was Sam McGuire?
and could quote Hegel, Yeats, and Blake.
He bought the old Cobb cabin
in the woods out by the lake.
And soon big canvas trucks would come
and roll out to his home and
their contents quite unknown.
swore they heard strange sounds
that rumbled from his windows
when the evening sun went down.
His li cense plate was traced to a
Sam McGuire who had expired.
then who the hell was Sam McGuire?
The space above his rooftop
they would scatter in wild fear.
And though it was still spring,
with many daffodils in town,
The leaves around his property
had shriveled and turned brown.
At the hardware store I met him,
he said, I'm Robert Smith.
He wore a rock and roll t -shirt
But Sam McGuire was tattooed
on his shoulder that perspired.
I wondered who was Sam McGuire
At summer's end, he disappeared,
that warned of landmines on his land
And then the special bulletin
The U .S. Army filled our town
and ran to where he'd live
Though not one mine was ever found,
the Geiger counters clicked
And the only question on the
lips of officials who inquired
If he was Robert Smith, they asked him,
