The Snuff Box

he dressed wild as a dream in those striped trousers flashing like railroad tracks under the sun, top hat bowler perched crazy on his head, long coat flapping in the wind off the river, gaudy shirt blooming colours like some mad flower in the grey city streets, eyeglasses swinging on a silver chain, clinking soft against his chest.

and the cane, oh that cane, hanging loose from a limp arm, just like that French painter we all know, the one who cut his ear for love or madness or both.

the good doctor, old-fashioned kindness pouring out of him till the very end, heart big as the Mississippi, but the liquor eating him slow, bottle after bottle in the dim-lit rooms.

and then the water rising in his lungs that hot summer of ‘78, drowning him from the inside while the world spun on outside, and the bridge, that high iron bridge, calling him up there for a vantage on all the despair below, the river rolling black and endless.

and in the pocket of that long coat, safe, secure, the snuff box from his old man, silver and worn, a little piece of yesterday he carried right into the night.

four days to find him,
alone on a riverbank,
the playschool children.