The Death of the Unknown Man

The Death of the Unknown Man

 

“Johnstown police and the Cambria County coroner are working to identify the body of a man in his 60s who was found Friday inside a home in the Woodvale section of the city.”

-- News item from the Tribune-Democrat (Johnstown, Pennsylvania), March 25, 2017

 

How fitting in a town with a past,

but cursed with a present tense

that does not seem to equal a future,

that today a man was found dead,

dead for at least three months,

and no one had noticed,

no family or friend to miss him,

utterly alone save for his pets,

sad little corpses found near him,

his last company on this earth,

all of them gone on to some eternal;

bodies that shared their love,

but were memorable to no one,

neither a neighbor nor the mail carrier,

not even a grocery clerk

like the one who looks for me every week.

 

In a world which seems so joined,

we forget the unconnected,

unmoored from human warmth

in a place unfurnished with kindness,

not even the careless greeting 

of those passing on a sidewalk.

How little comfort there is 

in pondering this man’s oblivion:

such an empty peace it is

to be merely removed from misery,

and so I keep musing about a hope--

 for a good beyond the absence of evil,

a passing dream, however faint, 

that somehow in the world of death

each of us will be always near

the touch of a hand that loves us.

 

First place winner, Pennsylvania Poetry Society, 2020