At The Bus Station

that Sunday afternoon I met a man with Lugsole shoes
and a Cuban cigar clamped between sandpaper lips.
He had penetrating, desperate eyes and a nervous,
sad-cloud mind, and he passed time by counting the hairs on his head,
which he pulled out one by one.
His name was Jerry, and he went to jail that year.
They said he raped a woman and fed her money to the pigeons.
But I only knew him for one Sunday afternoon,

for one hour and thirteen minutes before he had been locked up.
All he had said to me was that there were decent people in the world,
and he pulled my sandwich from my hand and fed it
to a hungry cold boy.