He carries letters until he can’t
remember why there are mail boxes.

Walks his route five miles a day anyway,
across the bridge and over the flood wall path.

Whistles, watches the river,
and sometimes stops by a coffee shop

just as the sun disappears over Covington.
Lingers in a bookstore before

shuffling after shadows backwards through time.
Sometimes he wanders into 1987.

Forgets that he no longer owns
the broken-down Rambler.  And halfway

across the flood wall, approaches the Fourth Street bridge,
where he almost always has to pee.

He takes a leak behind a scant lamppost
when the cop appears near his elbow.

He never, ever forgets my phone number.

Roberta Schultz is a singer songwriter, teacher and poet originally from Grant’s Lick, KY. Her poems and song lyrics have appeared in Sheila-na-gig, Kakalak, Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel, Still: the Journal, Women Speak, Riparian and other anthologies. Her three chapbooks, Outposts on the Border of Longing(2014,) Songs from the Shaper’s Harp(2017,) and Touchstones (2020) are published by Finishing Line Press.