From the cold concrete everything is far. The streetlights are stars of frigid light, globes
empty as the fragile husks of people covered in trappings of black coat over black suit,
each a thin layer when the wind threshes the crowd, sifting with ungentle hands hurriedly,
leaving the chaff to float around these streets like plastic trash. You can look down if you like,
I’m under the bench searching for a dime-sized tan button. It isn’t much, a thimble
from a lifetime spent back-aching through trenches of Salvation Army cardboard,
scrounging church pews for a match and another to fit the gabardine coat my father wore
on his last day at Westinghouse before they tossed him to the curb with the other supplicants
begging for their jobs.
                                  He said it was a blessing as he scrambled through fields of newsprint,
his worn red pen leading the way like a stuttering flashlight. Night came early for months. Spring
is a memory bleached through years of cold windy days spent searching for anything to tether
my busted soles to the past, when the sun was no mere imitation of some greater deity
and me you and the trees danced in the sunlit clearing.