John Doe

Last night the neighborhood watch reported a raggedy, sandy-haired hobo.
His willowy silhouette passed over lawns and through front and back yards,
in and out of lamplight, under a clear half moon.

That was a Saturday in August, when I slept soundly, windows open, miles upstream from the city of sprinklers. That was when I dreamt and forgot anonymous dreams.

On Sunday morning a keeper of public works arrived with his mower and rakes to the scene: the fresh wreck of a deer, little gore and no horns, flung up on the clean grass between tennis courts and boulevard, in the sun.