A Trespasser

I come out of my door
in the big-drop rain
and find a man taking shelter
beneath my eave,
like some elderly angel
in a soaked white shirt,
an odd pattern printed on his chest.

My first thought is he's my daughter--
the girl whose name means Dream.
But she never looks at me
with the humble eyes of a trespasser.
She'd never appologize
for being on the stoop.
She does not have
the thick skin of the sun
around her eyes.

So, to find him here
feels like catching a glimpse
at a mirror of a future;
a man paused by rain
using a tiny roof to wait
for the sky to dry.
A stranger, enough like me
to one day be me, unknown
but just beyond the door.



by jerry gordon