Oilskin Guttake

[michaelboy]

It is amazing how the pattern of a scent can be so complex and yet so precise.

I imagine holding my yellow oilskin rain slicker (somewhat like the Gorton's Fisherman's apparel) and remember its smell most of all. With that, I am in a steady warm downpour waiting for my sisters and dad to come home from school. The coat has a stoplight pattern safety theme print on the inside of the coat. Near the curb, I am stomping and humming to myself and I like the way it sounds as the rain patters on the detached beaked hood. I am wearing a pair of oversized black rubber boots - the kind with slotted steel buckles that jostle with a very characteristic metallic sound.

Now many raincoats are vinyl which really doesn't remind me of rainwear - rather I think of swimming pools, beach balls, and those guaranteed-flat-by-morning air-mattresses.

* * *

I depart as air—I shake my white locks at the run-away sun,
I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags.

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,
If you want me again, look for me under your boot-soles.

"You will hardly know who I am, or what I mean,
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
And filter and fibre your blood.

Failing to fetch me at first, keep encouraged,
Missing me one place, search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you."

~ From: "Leaves of Grass", Song of Myself, Walt Whitman