There’s nothing wrong with being bad,
he tells me, if you’re good at it—
coming from nowhere to sit beside me
like a gift, a mirror, a payment due.
I was busy breathing second-hand smoke
and drinking coffee from a cup
still swiped with some woman’s lipstick.
I was busy sweet-talking the waitress
into a free refill. Angel, I said,
but she’d heard it all before, here
where everyone could tell
what I was really doing . . .
And so he sat and told me how he lived
under the by-pass bridge,
how the police never hassled him
but stopped from time to time
to see if he was still alive.
He told me how he weathered
last week’s blizzard and this week’s
record lows in a sleeping bag,
snowmobile suit, and boots someone
had found for him God knows where.
We talked of shelters and waiting lists,
of how high the river was likely to rise.
He bragged he didn’t drink or cuss
but confessed he liked Mom’s coffee
and, when he could get them, Swisher Sweets.
Mom had some behind glass beneath the register
beside historic bars of chocolate,
dusty packs of Viceroys—
so I bought him some. Why not?
Because a man with open sores
on hands and cheeks
where the cold has cracked him open,
with hair longer and dirtier than mine,
who can, between the sentences we shared
speak softly to himself things
that shake him with laughter—
such a man deserves a smoke
and needn’t worry about cancer
or emphysema, either of which,
or whatever lays him out,
may for all I know descend
like some bright, hilarious angel
laden with gifts
over which he’ll laugh
through clouds of sweet smoke
and overflowing Maxwell House mouthfuls,
choking on laughter,
coughing bottomless cups of laughter,
until finally of everything he’s had his fill,
until finally he’s famished.