Winter Heart

A poem

Beneath a sky seething gray, she picks her way past swathes of oily rainbows spreading over asphalt.

Past the man at the Salvation Army kettle, ringing his metal bell in imperfect time to Christmas muzak seeping from the Shoprite.

Past the mother, one hand busy with a cigarette, her child’s face wet as she drags him along behind her.

Past the berm of yesterday’s snow, ornamented with rotting leaves, pocked with gravel.

She hugs a swollen shopping bag topped by a frill of salad greens, her black jacket buttoned high against the cold, her white braid, unraveled.

Behind her, an old man calls out as he falls, flimsy as a sheet of paper crumpled by an invisible hand, his cane skidding away, face benign as a child’s.

Long ago, when her hair and his were pitch black, when she was a good girl married at eighteen to the man sprawled on the ground, he would be in The City drinking flirting and worse, while back in Brooklyn she sang lullabies to the babies.

The babies have babies now, far from this upstate parking lot. And this man, loved, hated, hatred faded to indifference, cared for by her without much caring, warm as stone, dutiful as the good girl she has never outgrown.

A stranger in hunting camo jogs to the old man’s side, helps him to his feet and arm in arm guides him to the car where the wife waits, hands on the wheel, preparing a smile, rehearsing words of gratitude. “No problem,” the stranger says and is gone.

Under the roiling sky, the car pulls away. The old couple is headed for home, as upstate New York heads into its grimmest season.

Thanks so much for reading! This one’s cheerier.