Monday morning,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I sit at a table<\/p>\n\n\n\n
in a coffee shop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A young woman taps a tablet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Marty, the shop’s homeless mascot<\/p>\n\n\n\n
just rolled his folded blankets, sleeping bag and outerwear out the door.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In all my years of observing<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Martys around Oregon,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I have never seen one with folded anything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Before leaving, the barista<\/p>\n\n\n\n
set him up with<\/p>\n\n\n\n
a free fancy drink.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She always does.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He always whispers thank you<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It’s all he can get out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I’m typing up a dead man’s<\/p>\n\n\n\n entombed writing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I’m rolling away the stone<\/p>\n\n\n\n and resurrecting my promise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I wonder if anyone made a promise to Marty,<\/p>\n\n\n\n or Marty made a promise to someone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Across the street,<\/p>\n\n\n\n my Dad prepares himself<\/p>\n\n\n\n for breakfast in the<\/p>\n\n\n\n assisted living center.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I’ll join him soon for industrial coffee<\/p>\n\n\n\n and establishment oatmeal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We’ll talk of Marty and<\/p>\n\n\n\n his ubiquitous and<\/p>\n\n\n\n entirely unnecessary<\/p>\n\n\n\n American misery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Dad and I always talk of men and women like Marty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We know they’re not the Joads.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We don’t know who they are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The baristas discuss how to<\/p>\n\n\n\n handle Marty when he needs handling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They strategize a sympathetic stratagem<\/p>\n\n\n\n they know they’ll<\/p>\n\n\n\n have to implement, sooner than later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Implement is such a terrible-sounding word,<\/p>\n\n\n\n but it has its uses in policies and matters of the heart.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Marty! Marty! Marty!<\/p>\n\n\n\n You know how much I care about you? Enough to use three exclamations in a poem, that’s how much.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Poets should use them more, a lot more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You keep folding, brother.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There are lints of hope in that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They can accumulate into new fabric.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I believe in that,<\/p>\n\n\n\n or I wouldn’t be writing<\/p>\n\n\n\n about you as you shuffle<\/p>\n\n\n\n past me down the sidewalk,<\/p>\n\n\n\n as snow begins to fall.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Monday morning, I sit at a table in a coffee shop. A young woman taps a tablet. Marty, the shop’s homeless mascot just rolled his folded blankets, sleeping bag and outerwear out the door. In all my years of observing Martys around Oregon, I have never seen one with folded anything. Before leaving, the barista […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8324,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8323","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-meditations","category-poetry","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8323","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8323"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8323\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}