a dead man in the living room

I am thy father's spirit, Doom'd for a certain term to walk the night,... Hamlet

four a.m. a winter's morning
is the time of the soft sounds outside
the bedroom door of my cabin by the train tracks
workman's shoes shuffling on the stained,
trampled gray carpet
thick coat wool rustling on the frayed fabric
of my sunken sofa chair

i had left the front door unlocked, again
my bedroom door opened
to the living room with no curtains
so i stepped out a few feet from my sofa chair
a winter moon blared the room with blue light

i saw the man sitting comfortably,
deep in the sofa chair his elbows elevated
as they laid still on the arm rests
his legs out at an almost angle
as the weak cushion pretended
to sink under his weight

i remembered his coat woven in plaid
a poor man's coat thickly rich
in checkered red wool,
a coat from before i was born,
worn by men who worked the timber by hand
and hunted and drank and called it living

the man's gray irish wool cap matched
the few strands of peeking hair and
matched his heavy gray wool pants
the man's nose was heavy and rounded
much like his wide rounded face
with its two pencil lines of eyebrows
mildly curved on a flattened brow
and chalk lines for lips tightened into
an angry look, but for the tilted kindness
of his lidded eyes

i remembered his head barely reached past
the top of my tall, pot-belly stove with
its embers still desperate to heat the room
the man sat, deathly still, face frozen,
body stiff, staring into someplace other
than my living room

I remembered him as he slipped away
into the moon light inside my living room