The Debt

I've owed the newsstand man a quarter
for a little more than a year
on  a copy of the Times he gave me
one morning when I came up short.
I walk past him every day now.
His gray beard still the same,
arrayed around him, gum, and newsprint.
In sunshine snow and rain.
When I pass he doesn't look at me.
Doesn't remember, probably,
That I never paid my debt.
But I haven't stopped at that newsstand
Since he let me have the Times.