Brown Overcoat

TFR Home Page

Contents

Prev. Page

Comments

Brown Overcoat
By Lynne Potts

Without buttons left on a hedge in Morningside Park,
pale green smell of mold in the lining, frayed lapels.

Who knows how it came to be here, threadbare
in the night --what arms flung it?

We are of a lost mind, not understanding
how so much went wrong in the land;

not just drudgery, or longings for our children,
but also the rumble of distant trouble--

days rolled over, doubled up with doffed
imprints of someone who once

slid arms into it before a Bergdorf mirror,
feeling so twill, so blithe, so ready to show off.