"No, I don't need any help," Jimmie said,
after he sat up a minute later
on the sidewalk in 98-degree heat.
He drank warm Coke and ate a peanut butter sandwich
I made from my groceries.
He'd asked for a cigarette and fainted, a ghost weight
into my arms. When was the last time he ate?
He told me he didn't remember:
"I just need to get back to Augusta."
We were waiting for the Number 5 bus
one hundred feet from the door of St. Mary's;
on his wrist a V.A. hospital band hung loose from the bone.
He refused help when the cops arrived, too.
Very slowly Jimmie pulled out an I.D.,
showed the cops a few dollars from his wallet.
Some folks go on living
until the sun burns a hole in the sky.
Some refuse the help of a stranger,
without simple luck or the offer of a sandwich
to pull them back from the edge. Some
get hypnotized by drugs, a bottle, life itself,
and dance right into the fire.
You learn to ask after each other. A week later,
the bus rider on the Number 7 Hawthorne
sees the empty seat,
asks the innocent question
of a familiar face. They'll answer carefully,
afraid of saying too much,
afraid what may happen to them too. "Oh, Jimmie,
he just went on ahead a bit," they say,
and the rider is never quite sure
if Jimmie made one refusal too many,
or if he made it back to Augusta in time
to become less of a ghost.
You can expect to see him again
at the next stop, at the next stop,
at the next stop,
or maybe never.
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