the raincoat (II)
unfolding it, well I’ll
say this:
unfolding it was the
worst.
II.
When
Callie got his raincoat back,
buttoned
and folded, he thought
but
oh this is what splits a heart’s
might. The flat, pointed collar,
the
hood down the back, the neat line
of
black buttons, all of them,
and
clean, an absolute squeak of clean:
no mud or blood
(the propeller blade
they say, one boy beneath
it…)
as
clean as the first day it kept him
dry,
though he can’t remember when,
but
he knows before that job
in
Rockland when he stepped free
of
the staging and fell far enough
to
push a femur through a thigh. If I
were
a plow horse he’d said, they’d dig
my
grave around me and shoot me
into
it, if it happened
where
the dirt was soft enough,
if
it weren’t winter, or the mud of some
Mays
in the county, planting potatoes
in
soup…
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