KAY

 

She's been in the neighborhood for years.

Sometimes she sleeps in.

Sometimes she sleeps out.

Once her and a guy named J.C. (it's a fact)

slept in his pickup for two years.

They ate out of the grocery store

and used the bathroom at the convenience store

on the corner. Hard living.

They parked the pickup right in front of my place

and sometimes in the night, I'd get up

and see them sitting side by side in the darkness.

I used to wonder what they thought about,

what they talked about through the long night.

Later, J.C. lost his truck

and went to live at the Salvation Army.

He was handy with his hands

and finally got a pretty good job.

I still see him once in a while

but he doesn't live in the neighborhood anymore.

But Kay is still around.

She sweeps up at one or two places,

Sometimes she gets work for a while

staying with one of the old folks in the neighborhood.

She gets by. She goes on.

Transient as a dream but a fixture just the same.

A symbol of something,

something right on the edge of our awareness

but never quite in focus,

a creature of the weather and of time,

a condition of the soul.

 

 

Albert Huffstickler