Raincoat

Some poems get worked on for a while, then get put in a folder labeled 'unfinishables' for a year or two, or three, then get pulled out again.
Soon after I moved to Waltham, early '90's,
First time I saw a dead person.


Raincoat

It wasn’t the tears of Heaven,
But a soft mist rain,
  like we get outside of Boston,
As I lay in bed, attuned to the tinnitus of numb

Halfway there, lights flashed,
  I got up,
Red and blue spinning police lights lit up my neighborhood
In a transmography of clapboard threedeckers,
  conspiracies of strobes harsh on the rods and cones

There, in the white barred crosswalk, a rain coat,
  a man dead in the street,
No police sirens,
No screeching hit and run tires,
No gunshot,
No stab wound,
No outbreak of plague or cholera,
Just a dead man,
  in a rain coat,
In the street

I felt I ought to do something!
The police were already there,
I felt I ought to do something!
It was raining out and I was standing in the window,
  in my underwear,
I felt I ought to do something!
I did something, I stood there,
I felt I ought to do something!
After five minutes I got tired,
I felt I ought to do something!
I did something,
  I went back to bed.

With the sunrise the alarm the coffee the shaving the dressing,
  the putting on the coat the going out the
Hey! There’s a chalk outline in the crosswalk!
  oh yeah,

It was half washed away with the overnight rain,
  but there he was
For a moment I stood there,
  atop a planet where God is hallowed, over there, be thy name,
And he was just an outline, a could be, an empty but no form,
  rinsing away on the road in the rain

Can I even hold the thought?
But I have to catch my train…

When I got home in the black night,
I didn’t even remember to check for chalk

I haven’t even thought of him again until now