The Visitation

Fancy, if on an evening
from your second story
looking down lighted street,
you mark that distant figure
crooked in an overcoat,
drunken legs lagging
toward you in the dark:
"What a night to be out . . . "

But the drizzle gutters
and still he's coming
toward the heart
of your cul de sac
oblivious to neighbors;
Angus barks into the fog.

Now only a softened form
against the silken lawn
the shifting winds make nothing
the cry of the weathercock-
then dry footsteps on the porch: 
a thin insistent gentlemanly knock.

copyright 2001 Phoebe Claire Publishing, LLC  All rights reserved