With his corncob pipe: reincarnation of a poem

I remember the last time I saw my grandfather.  It was January and the sun was out.  We were sitting on the front porch of his white, almost vacant and cold home.  It was just how he lived.  I hadn’t seen him since my grandmother’s funeral.  I don’t think it bothered him very much that she was dead and I don’t think it bothered him much that he was still alive.  His eyes were frosty like that color of blue that is reflected through one of the icicles on the old barn with no doors, when sky is clear, and you are standing in the sewn patch of yellow sun-stitched hay.  The wind was blowing; lightly it gave a crisp bite on the cheeks and ears.  Snow had fallen the previous night and the fragile powdery flakes were picked up in the gusty rhythms.  He had a blank, chilled but content look about him.  He did not speak as he smoked his pipe and, I, with my little experience, as he would say sometimes, smoked cigarettes.  I wasn’t exactly sure what to say but I felt compelled to speak.  “Are you thinking about the war?”

“No.”

“Oh, there is just a strange look in your stare.”

“I only think of nothing, and the sounds of the frosty wind.”

And we sat and listened to the green scaly snow peppered pines and junipers thinking of no misery.