Alone in the Cold

Homeless
Hungry
and Cold.

His placard drips
with ice rain,
a forgotten man stationed
a few feet to the side
of a highway off-ramp.
He shifts slowly
on his cane,
searching for the angle
that shelters him best
from a driving Chicago wind.

Alone.
Such a hopeless place
to be during the
numb-to-the-bone frosts
of a February that seems
to go on forever.

For a moment I try
to match his gaze,
but the lights have all gone out.
There is only a dull glare
as he stares, mangy beard pointed
to the ground, and freezing rain
which rolls down his cheeks
like the many tears
he must long to cry.

Yet in the passing moments
between red light and green
It is I who feels like weeping
as I struggle to reconcile this,
an image of my brother locked
in a forgotten state,
wondering, with my solitary tear,
if he was ever loved at all.