Vagrancy by John Grey

Rock Bottom by Thomas Hawk from Flickr

There’s the bridge that Stella jumped from.
“What a life” screams the vagrant.
A car drives by with its radio thumping.
The moon is orange.
Its shadows seem to dance.
And Stella. Twenty-three years old.
And some guy says,
“Stella, such a shame.”
And then off to the bar,
the usual crowd,
the blue light of the bottles.
The vagrant, all creaking joints,
stumbles across a parking lot,
dressed for death in mid-November,
looking for a bed of dismembered leaves.
Fifteen years before, Stella was in Milwaukee.
And now cop cars blast by 
the last place she was seen alive.
Stella, I’m sure, didn’t mean to make a fuss.
But we all die
and the survivors have to do something about it.
There were others of course.
Insane Hal who cut his own throat.
And JT who went off to war
so those of us left behind
would have someone to mourn.
Now there’s these scratches on the door
from people long ago,
aching to be let in.
And neighbors of course,
mapped into their little squares.
This occasional desecration of life
means nothing to those raking in cash,
Or maybe something to the one
who spends all day staring at the wall.
The vagrant plays at life 
from a mound beside the river.
He watches boats. 
Or drags himself through the park.
Someone calls a taxi.
Someone waits at the bus stop.
All to the sound of ice-cubes rattling in glass.