Winter Clothing

Winter Clothing

(“He is the one mentioned by the prophet Isaiah, ‘The voice of one, shouting in the desert, Make ready the way of the Lord; straighten His paths!’” Matthew 3:3)

I put my gray sweats on into the heavy morning,
air a slight drip, breath a damp hello on
toward the breakfast-view of the river
from the backside of the one block downtown
restaurant.

It may have been too early, I may have been too slow,
words were like the careful boats who heard the foghorn
repeating the same warning before the island split the channel;
deep north and sandbar south.

We may be hard of hearing, we may be easy talkers,
we may want to say it clearly but the waters drown
the spoken ink we fell asleep knowing.

My coat is cow’s leather, not camel brush;
my breakfast Belgian waffles, never locusts
(but I do eat honey)
and I’d like the road ready, the single block I walk
downtown sometimes early, prepared and ready
for better hearing and quicker feet
to follow, fog or not (and trade my learning for
love’s experiment, a t-shirt and sneakers on the ground.)

I put my gray sweats on, my winter clothing
while the adolescent boy I met was short sleeve
white and jeans. One sentence was a door open from the inside

And the rest of our talk (other men and our inventions)
we tried to open with good intentions. Our words are
stuck, our love perhaps not, but we need practice
to cure the bends from spirit to sound, heart to hello
before we goodbye next time we meet.