Wild Game with Skin in the Tame

The best reason to imagine
How someone might react to you
Is to head off what they might do
That could be dangerous for you.
Anticipating unpleasant
Behavior is not vanity,
Although vanity’s included.
I think of this often, in woods.

I’ve been reported more than once
For looking a bit suspicious,
For not being clearly involved
In a normal activity,
For being silent and alone.
Reading and writing, I have been
Reported as slumped unconscious.
I’ve been checked on, reprimanded,

Encouraged, discouraged, engaged,
Implicitly threatened, followed,
And everything but arrested.
Once, one evening, decades ago,
Police showed up to take me in
For questioning, and my car, too,
Has been called in as abandoned.
And bear in mind, I’m a white man.

Granted, I’m a lone, disabled,
Undersized, odd-looking white man—
An aura of Rip Van Winkle
Commingled with Rumpelstiltskin.
It’s not like I don’t understand.
But if I were not a white man?
I push my limits to vanish,
And I suffer the suspicions,

But when I succeed, I wonder,
Even then, what I might seem like
To someone stumbling over me,
Given my scruffy appearance—
So much depends on looking neat,
Speaking quickly and politely,
Articulate fool that I am,
And so much depends on my skin.