There is a man who lives up the road

He walks 20 miles a day for milk

Bread, cigarettes, peace

He talked a while ago

About the upcoming

War between the haves and have-nots

I wondered if I should be afraid

But that was before his son threw him

Off their porch

Breaking his arm

Explanation became evident

In the bruises peeking through

Constant self-deprecation  on

Those zero degree mornings

As he sat, my passenger, and I

The ride he prays for in winter

 And I wonder what he dreams

At night next to his heartless wife

In the trailer, in the one room

That’s not his son’s

I wonder what he has other than

Complaints about the empty wall

That used to hold the rented flat-screen

That was sold by wife and son for $100

 His type is legion

30 winters in this god-forsaken landscape

And I know creation is a joke

Free of will

Free to suffer

Blows to the sacred empire

 God loves you?

Tell this to the walking man

The thin stick of humanity

Face lined like a map going nowhere

At two miles an hour

Tell him he’s one of Jesus’ children

Take him to Rome ensconced in luxury

For his silence for

I have yet to hear him curse

Rail about his scat-littered life

This socio-diversity for god’s pleasure

This constant cavalcade of misery

 I can see it as he trudges past my porch

Hunched deep in cold tattered jackets

He is blind but for his need for milk

Bread, cigarettes, and peace