Lost and Found

Here is the man begging, the same man for so many years. He has an alcoholic’s face, too many years of too much drinking. His hair is white and he has a slight shuffle and a hooked cane in one hand and a plastic cup one-third full with change in the other.

He looks like one of the last World War II veterans, only that would make him too old. He looks like an old-school New York drunk as seen by Joseph Mitchell, only I’ve never actually seen him appear drunk. The ruddy color of his tired skin gives him away. Today I see him and I realize that this is his life, this is what he does. He walks the trains and asks for money, please, and the days turn into months and then years and here he still is. Will he die one day and will a newspaper article appear about all the New Yorkers who saw him all those years but never really knew who he was?

There is a newborn on her mother’s breast next to me. The baby’s lips are parted in a full open heart, and her bark-brown eyes study me. I remember the words of an ex who wrote me recently with the news that he has a 22-month-old baby girl: “I have never loved someone in quite the way I love her as my child.” This mother next to me, her lips graze the baby’s forehead as she whispers sweet things to her. Mother gives baby kisses between words, and I realize I wish we all knew such love.