Bart Wilcox
The Yellow Raincoat
2025, Oil on canvas, 24″ x 18″

It is the definite article,
not the specific coat,
but definitely the one that represents
the one that by the time the third
kid inherits it is brittle and cracked,
but owing to the sailcloth
underneath, impervious,
shielding us from childhood
the brother and sister smells
and the mold, growing
dank and comfortable as poverty.
A mere ten years later, I am
standing watch on the bow
of a Navy destroyer, the
foul-weather gear, too long in
the locker, reeks of the little
old lemon slicker and its
solitude, the amplified
drone of rain and ice,
the drowning memory
of solitude, of sole days
tangled in a sea of kelp,
fields of jellyfish, swale
on dark swale, great curtains,
deep interstices upon
deep, the squelch of rubber
boots, lost in the hail.
Twisting in the black,
a shred of gold.