Fur Coats To Get Into

The dapper wing-tipped lawyer flings

his cashmere overcoat over neck and shoulder,

fanning it capacious as a cape as he blows right

past Miss Lady Blind inside the courthouse lobby.

Next, we see the heart-throb taker tossing braids

while weaving through the school-hall slalom,

slipping on her quilted outer shell, such skill.

Then in our view the park-bench prophet raising

spastic arms to add another layer for the trek

across the bridge to belly up in Jordan’s waterhole.

Fourth and last, the hard-nosed con fresh on parole

thrusting ink-mapped arms through openings

in his stiff and musty pea coat from the navy,

then leaning left-side shoulder into winter’s icy

barriers, he kicks a cakewalk over years of bitter.

Four coats, just cuts of cloth without the wearers;

the wearers, they’ll put them on to keep

heat in, cold out – always in degrees, variably.