the homeless man
sits cross-legged
in the median
sign held between
index and thumb
too small to read
I imagine it said
something akin
to help
or change
or the end is near
I couldn’t have stopped
since traffic was as long
as the sun’s stretched shade
across the fall sky
drawing closed the day’s curtain
as he waited for something
to happen
the prophet, with a small piece
of cardboard
handwriting crudely scrawled
with something you would
have had to read
up close
I fingered the bills
I’d give him
and drove away
into the mouth
of the same town
that spat him out
Kevin LeMaster’s poems have appeared in Rockvale Review, Main Street Rag, Mantis and Barely South Review. He is the author of the chapbook Mercy (Arroyo Seco Press 2023) and the forthcoming chapbook In the Throes of Beauty, (FLP 2024).