There's no old, only ALIVE !  

I woke up bleary, real beery, and saw 

the old woman’s wig, like an oven-warm

Bundt Cake, warming on the sill in the morning sun. 

She wasn’t old, of course, and never would be, 

she only seemed so to me because I was 27 that morning 

and she was 72, that morning, and she was playing Elton John, loud. 

I was on her couch in a cold wet foggy clump 

of blue jeans and green corduroy, my Donegal cap 

still on as I yawned, and then she came in

the front room of her flat and put on the song 

“Honky Cat” because she said it had come out in 1972 

and she always played an Elton John song for every year 

of her birthday, on the year the song was released. 

What a system, I thought. 

“Happy Birthday!” I said.  

I was in her apartment because the night before she 

saw me drunk-driving my boots through the snow 

on Commonwealth Avenue in the Back Bay, after last call, 

and she’d inconceivably asked me if I wanted to come home 

with her for the night and get warm. 

She said I looked homeless but that I reminded her of her son. 

This woman didn’t remind me of my mother, 

who didn’t know that I was homeless or even out of town.

I like your flat, I said, and yes I’d love some coffee, 

because she’d just asked me, and it smelled so good. 

She said she saw me seeing her wig perched on the windowsill 

warming up for the day

I said no offense but it looks like a Bundt Cake, hee hee!

Hell if it does! she hollered spontaneously, but her eyes

were like Christmas twinkle lights so she wasn’t really mad. 

She said my wig looks like one of Van Gogh’s haystacks, 

alright? I said oh yes, you’re right, I stand corrected, 

I still didn’t know her name, but I doffed my cap. 

She accepted that, and dropped the needle on Elton again. 

“I had cancer a few years ago,” she said, she didn’t know 

my first name either, it wouldn’t matter in the end,

“it went into remission, but first I had the treatment, lost all my hair, 

and for some reason, my crops didn’t come back. So, I do wigs.” 

“May I see it on you?” I asked softly. Drama in the room.

“Why yes,” she said. “Ready?” 

Then she dragged the drama out, walking slowly across the floor, 

across those creaky old Back Bay Boston boards to the window, 

and she slipped on her wig. 

She looked over at me across that well-appointed Brahmin room, 

coquettishly cocked her head to the side, waited for my compliment. 

It came right away, my biggest smile all that winter. 

I could tell she was getting ready to go, 

wherever she was going

so I drank up the rest out of my coffee cup, 

getting ready to go wherever I was going. 

She knew how to walk. 

I liked watching her move around, striding across her 

hardwood floors for her coat and keys, hat and bag,

her shoes sounding like shoes should sound on a floor. 

Jingling her keys, she strode over to her stereo, 

played “Honky Cat” again, and it was still playing 

as we went all the way downstairs and out into the snow.

We got out to the Commonwealth Avenue sidewalk, 

came to the moment when she’d go one way, me the other, 

and she put her jewelry-shiny hand out for me to shake. 

“Well, maybe you won’t pass this way again,” she said, “but 

if you do, knock on my door. Otherwise, get back to Kansas City 

and get out of your homelessness ... get on back home.”

(I must have told her about Kansas City last night, probably 

in a very after midnight sort of sentimentality, I thought.) 

“You know what to do. And give my regards to the Rafael Hotel!”

Then she turned, her perfume still on my hand.

I watched how she walked walking away, 

walking like she was really going somewhere. 

I copied her walk and went the other way.