Cop knows every one of us.
It's ESP or something.
Can't speed without him clocking the MPH.
Can't smoke cigarettes or dope behind our own barn
without him sniffing the smoke
from his tiny cramped fan-blown office.
Linda and I park by the lake at night,
and it's his reflection rippling in the water,
not the moon's.
If a kid takes something that
don't belong to him,
it's on his rap sheet
before it's in his pocket.
Cop's writing tickets in his sleep.
He's already wise
to who he'll hand them to.
Cop can read us
like a cop used to read him
when he was our age.
That's how he learned to be a cop.
“Town Cop” was printed in Salem Cemetery, No. 6 of Inwood Indiana. Pick up the paperback from Prolific Press; the stories and poems published online are free to read here.
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