Poetry

January Flashback

by

Richard Fein

My face was protected from the cold wind’s slap,
for I was on the warm side of the train window.
Through that window I saw a cardboard shelter in a vacant lot
and a garbage can in front recruited as a stove.
A man huddled over it, firelight on his face.
Sparks were frantic in the January wind.
Then a spark roared into dragon’s breath.
Suddenly his ramshackle shelter was burning.
And he tried to tear the flaming door away, a flap of cardboard.
It burned him but I couldn’t hear him scream.
How could I with the distance between,
myself on the warm side of the window.
and the relentless click-clack of the train.
It burned him but the train moved on,
and no one riding on it took notice.
Except me.
I was the only one looking out.
The rest were sleeping, reading, or too deep within themselves.
Even now, sometimes in January and perhaps February
with my face naked in an icy wind
there’s a flashback.
He was pounding his burning jacket with his fist.
And then the train moved on
and he was out of my view.
And I, being on that train, also moved on.
What else was I supposed to do?