Long Black Coat

by John Grey

 

A hundred and fifty years ago,
the guy wearing it could have

been a gunslinger. These days,
he’s most likely a pall-bearer at a funeral.

The gunslinger would have
kept the undertaker in business.

Now, it’s heart-attacks,
cancer. Sure, they’re like bullets.

But over time. Without the drama.
My father wore a long black coat

and he was neither Wild Bill Hickock
nor some guy plugging his latest line

in rosewood coffins. My mother said
he looked like a foreign spy.

But to him, it was just the thing
for keeping warm and dry in bad weather.

I remember him staring in the mirror,
like he was making sure it was him inside the coat.

No gunslinger, no pall-bearer.
Certainly no foreign spy.

Sometimes, if it wasn’t for ourselves,
we’d never know who’s reflecting.

Sure he already had the cancer.
But he was careful to button it just right.