Riverside Louis’ Yer Daddy
He walked as if the wind blew against his back,
head down, an almost running walk,
shoulders humped and feet wide apart to keep balance
with weight shifting the balance of owness.
What he carried was heavy. The burden-carrier
of the community. The laughing stock,
the Boogity man, sorrow slumped
against the bridge pylons, was his designated
role.
“Here Louis, have a swig!” Pee in a bottle
and a pack of kids tormenting the thirster.
Parents kept their kids in line,
“Hush, or I will give you to Louis!”
“Hey, Louis, who’s yer Daddy?”
and they were all related.
Mothers giving a non-present parent
a face and name to her single-parented child.
“Look, there’s yer Daddy!”
At two, the child was grateful
before he knew the joke.
Louis was hit and run. Mother says,
“Oh, my god, finally. I knew it was going to happen.”
Child on the floor, wept, “Is my Daddy going to live?”
There was no consolation for the grieving child
when she tried to explain.
How much we owe this man,
bent to the baggage of a benign community.
If Louis had been my Daddy,
I’d have walked the metered main street
to fend off the flurry of jests.
Instead, I write him poetry
for I am a foreigner in this strange land
where even the least of these are prophets
carrying our crosses, like good fathers would.
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