POETRY

Ol’ Lucy

Searching, aimless in the rain

Ol’ Lucy, she’s wearin’ the blues and carryin’ one of her shoes across the road.

Nobody really knows her she’s just a shell that was her an outline of that Lucy long ago.

Ol’ Lucy’s goin’ nowhere this curb’s as good as that one there the crossin’ is just somethin’ she can do.

She can’t see the drivers’ snarls or hear the horns of angry cars while searchin’ for the Lucy she once knew.

Nevermind the cold wind blowin’ her tattered jacket, long since stolen a plastic bag upon her head for cover.

She stops to hug a building’s wall her face against its stone facade to share its warmth as if it were a lover.

Ol’ Lucy makes her choices in a city with a million voices hers is the only one she hears.

When she sees a vision in blue she hobbles off and drops her shoe to find that Lucy she’s not been in years.

And as she crosses back again a crowd of people lets her in to help obscure her loneliness and pain.

Ol’ Lucy, she’s livin’ her life like a suicide lookin’ for a knife a fighter who’s lost her fight searchin’, aimless in the rain.

Jim Dutton © 2021