I Saw You Take The Money Out of My Coat

for a friend

I Saw You Take the Money Out of My Coat

I was supposed to be sleeping.
It wasn't a pretty picture,
the furtive way your hands moved,
the tension in your shoulders,
but then I saw your shoulders,
so narrow & tired.
I believe I watched in slow motion.
I did not cry out in confrontation.
I could not dredge up an outrage.
It was like the last fifty dollars I
lost once, in a department store.
I remember thinking that it was Christmas,
and maybe I was just a delivery person,
used by an angel,a donation to the poor,

until that money became
something that wasn't even mine.
As for this, your indiscretion,
I love you, more than the thievery,
more than the ten dollars,
which is really not what you
have stolen,
I want to say it is not even stolen!
In my head,
I am giving it to you.

Reviews

[W.k.kortas]

Iago's aphorism moderned-up (and its speaker a much more honorable character, I should add)...sharp, pithy, yet soft around the edges. Very good stuff, indeed.

[Emily B]

My friend's dad ended up living in the milk barn for a while after his wife divorced him. The trash man stole his warm winter coat. He just shook his head. He figured if that other man needed it bad enough to take it, he could always get another coat. I guess nothing we have is entirely ours, and if some thing takes flight, leaves us sooner than we think it ought to . . . well, we just might as well make our mind up that we are giving it.