- indy // A Man Out of Time
Hunkered over the aching cave of his chest
And stared at the frayed blue aglet
On his left shoelace, untied.
He didn’t bother to fix it, just looked
As if held some bitter truth,
Some rancid hangover fix with eggs
You have to force yourself to drink
Catching the M train on Sixth Avenue.
He had his hands tucked in his jacket pockets.
He carried his broad frame
Like a school child lost in the bustling Brooklyn crowd
And I wondered, if under all his stature,
I caught his eye as we boarded,
Of a jazz band loved and long gone
And I longed to know what song
Was running through his head.
Then rose, swayed as if ambushed
And disappeared among the gray faces
Of a Tuesday night commute.
Outside some Brooklyn Heights apartment,
Looking like he woke to find the world moved on
And left him seventy years behind.
He’s crying now, still bent over
Sitting stooped on the stairs
Trying to stifle sobs that won’t stop coming
By that that same awful image of a boy
Abandoned in a metro station,
Weathering this world all alone,
Until his fortitude reaches
I still see him sometimes,
In students scribbling away past midnight,
In the old man feeding birds bits of rye.
When howling December winds
Have blown hope away like tossed tumbleweeds,
His reflection blinks back at me in the bathroom mirror
While I’m washing my hands
And the water slips through my fingers
