Afternoon Joe

Athens, Georgia

October 10, 2011; revised December 13, 2013

You smile into a steaming cup 
in search of grounds and gracious lines 
to share with he in painter’s cap

who holds up signs by traffic stops 
where hand-drawn letters spell the barter, 
"work for food," but what he offers

one more try for wary drivers – 
multiply the fish and loaves

within the gap from red to green. 
But eyes averted never see 
the narrow Galilean path 
that stretches off another way

beyond the light that guides the flow 
from bank to drugs to Chick-fil-A 
and on to homes to huddle nights 
encased in husks of wood and cheer, 
which fortify a life’s veneer

in hoarded warmth

                                   but those like Joe

spend hours in the public square

and nurse their warmth from cardboard

cups – a Big Joe buys an afternoon

of comfort on a well-used couch

amidst assorted Macs and pads

and textbooks cracked by pert coeds

in gym shorts, flip-flops, painted toes

and funky guys in baggy clothes,

by nursing interns sporting scrubs

and midlife strivers buttoned up,

a young instructor talking math

by Chinese couples lugging packs

a working mother, child in tow –

they come and go and barely note

an old man whiling time alone

and gentle souls at rest, like Joe

who on a warm midafternoon

could tell you how to weather cold 
on cruel nights that numb the soul, 
when howling Arctic winter lows 
pile snow on sagging canvas homes, 
the weak won’t make the morning call 
in trembling walls of flesh and fabric;

battered down, resigned to die, 
the voice of God 

       commands we rise

       and manufacture right

       on ice, from slush

       a snowman shrine to life

       submerging fear

       in warmth of play

       through bitter night

       to brittle day

                                  and yes I too

I mean to say have felt my heart so

strangely warmed behind my silent

public smile my words are snowmen

guarding night and creeping numbness

in my life,  but first retreat to resupply

the cardboard warmth to ease

the ties of mid-day neighbors, even

Joe who, unobtrusive, slipped away

somewhere along the ancient path

to find a home beneath the sky.