Uncles in '55, reminiscence in prose

Large towering men sporting thick black mustaches
All smokers and drinkers with boisterous voices
Who wore ties and suspenders on billowing shirts
Lazily tucked into voluminous waistbands
Wearing hats even on sweltering summer days
To remove them sometimes and wipe beaded foreheads
With their large and white-laundered handkerchiefs

Their hands reeked of tobacco and news-printer's ink
And jangled loose change in their pockets as they strolled
Half-moon metal on heels of their sturdy brown shoes
Clicking on the cement like the shoe-laden hooves
Of majestic horses on hot summer asphalt

My father's five brothers, all of them their own man
Léandre, a magistrate in juvenile court
A position more feared than doctor or dentist
But the kindest, gentlest man, my godfather
Henri, with a head and a face like Hemingway
A public defender, a courtroom nemesis
Barrel-chested, his voice carried a mile when he
Hollered for his daughter to come home for supper
Paul, the fine soldier, who worked for the government
Eugène, mysterious electrical wizard
André, the youngest, black sheep artist musician
Destined for for greatness and composers' pantheon

And then Bill, an outsider, the brother-in-law
Who first taught me to fish, later smoke and drink beer
Wiping foam from his mustache with his thick finger
Who fought in the war and was terribly injured
And had a steel plate in his skull, or some shrapnel
I don't rightly recall, and no one's left to say

(From "No Rhyme Or Reason", by Charles Prévost Linton, a fictitious compendium of his later works)