Daily, Smokey, his patchwork dufflebag and campfire smell greet me at
the Post Office,
"76 days 'til xmas, today we prepare to serve the homeless
frankfurters!"
Dashing off these word salad epistles to strangers,
Women made familiar through one-way correspondence;
perhaps Mother never answered either.
He sets the standard for street etiquette,
always asking after the jailed and pink slipped;
never missing a funeral, even when he fills that sacred space
with his own psyco-scape.
He put down the bottle to shovel that accidental sidewalk.
He bathed and shaved to visit his friend's hospitalized mother.
While the 18-wheeler's downshift calls to a life on the road
and the dumpster's cardboard boxes provide an inviting urban
nest in the glow of pawn shop balls,
I see him in his smelly clothes drift by toward his houseless home
as trapped, I sweat to laundromat muzak.
Last train through Salem adds percussion to the dryer's drone,
giving voice to the heartbeat of a town pursuing peace.
In the morning, I board that train
with an earful of "Aiko-Aiko" and "Box of Rain;"
a Grateful Dead prophylactic.
Sardine-packed commuters blaze past Smokey's sylvan home --
a suppository shoved into the bowels of the naked city.
Dust and diesel fumes greet me at the platform
where a chair-bound road warrior solicits my charity.
I pass by, intent on fuelling up on java,
Colombian Supremo to narcotize me for urban survival.
Stepping over a potential corpse, I crush an H & R Block cup.
Constant jingling of coin-filled caps taxes my patience
for what never seems to change.
After the changeless busy-ness of whatever meeting dragged me
into the metropolitan civilized cesspool,
I slog my way into the noonday haze.
The "sanity" of navy blue power-lunching is pierced
by the screeching of a Herring Gull.
Only Mr. mismatched this-'n-that-way hair smiles
at the sound of it.
The gull song accompanies my scouring of Custom House heights
for fledging falcons, avian wanderers,
struggling to find home in concrete canyons.
Rolling house-ward, I long to wander crazy
through my true, wooded, home.
May Smokey be my guide.
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| Copyright � 1996 Ian Lynch. All rights reserved |