“Hunched, hands in jean pockets, he crossed the sill
and asked if coats were free, for it was cold
and he’d no money. From my station at the till
I offered him his pick from the dollar rack.
I knew him instantly – prematurely old
with dirt and drink, the toil of scavenging bins
for bottles – and waited while he thumbed
through stacks of used clothes for him to see me
as I saw him: a child. Of scant promise, frog-eyed,
slow, twin stunted by a runt-eating brother,
bullied by boys, by girls taunted at recess.
In our grade six pageant I’d played mother
to his pauper (stiffly, and chagrined
that though he struggled to learn his part,
he was better than me), the teacher’s pet
project who conquered the gym, earning the hearts
of classmates and parents, all of us
oxen yoked to the ploughboy’s performance.
Propped up in the dirndl I’d steeped in a vat
of dye as if it were a potion for courage,
and a peasant blouse, the costume that won
my audition, I toed my mark and muttered
each line with a gulp, marvelling as “My son!”
strode fearlessly the fiefdoms of the stage,
seeking his fortune. When the princess,
a full foot taller, bent to kiss her swain,
he doffed his tinfoil crown and croaked
out a punchline that brought down the house.
Now, stepped from decades of gleaning gutters,
he’d returned to what was possible, a man
grown into his fate like a foot into a boot.
Who knows what losses he had suffered,
what oceans crossed, mountains climbed to arrive
at such a state (I’ve seen him since, half-soaked
in mythos, boarding the morning bus
in bleak confusion, once pushing a cart
under the drawbridge where ragged souls,
guardians of the moat, huddle at the footings).
Yet that day he wasn’t seeking pity.
From beyond the backdrops of our city
he’d returned – still short, spunky – to visit
his mom, he said, and hadn’t brought a coat.
I saw my own life had been driven
by small-heeled struggle, the leather scuffed
but snug, and that for a long while I’d been
walking the wrong way in a costume slowly
going out of style. I tightened the strings
of my shopkeeper’s apron, awaiting
some mention of my forgettable role.
If he remembered, he acted as though
we’d never met. I sensed him sparing me
a show, should it shame us to recall the stars
extinguished in the children we once were:
the miscast crone stirring her empty pot,
the halfwit hero who sets out penniless
and returns with a title and an ermine stole.
No curtain call. He’d come only to claim
a cloak against the weather. Nothing fit.
“Try Saint Vinnie’s”, I said. The sky looked like snow.
And wished him luck, but didn’t speak his name.”
Daily Dose of Poetry 