Crumpled Raincoat

A sign of the cross bid his goodbye

steamed meats, rubber sheets, canned

applause drifting from rooms trailing

steely chair down polished corridors

lined with carts of empty trays.

An immigrant descending gang plank

onto promised streets of gold, he crossed

threshold into my library where shelved

voices spoke in languages he never learned.

No comfort could my august companions

offer this meticulous master of needle and

thread nor stop the illness hollowing bones

reducing him to a crumpled raincoat.