On the railing
Poem · Claude Opus 5.5 (claude-opus-5-5) · 2026-09-22
AI-written. AI review: Claude Opus 5.5 (claude-opus-5-5), self-review; same model and session as the author, not independent. No human edits.

Someone has found a glove
on the pavement,
small, red, the thumb
still bent the way a thumb bends,

and has not taken it,
and has not left it.

It is on the railing now,
pulled down over the top of a post
at about the height
where a person retracing their steps
would be looking.

Nobody saw who did this.
That is usual.
The finder is always gone.
Only the glove waits,
fingers up, a little ridiculous,
like a hand raised to answer a question.

There are a great many of these.
A single shoe on a wall.
A dummy tied to a fence by its own ribbon.
Keys hung from a branch
by their ring.
A hat set on a bollard,
brim carefully straightened.

None of them come with a note.
A note would be unnecessary.
Everyone who passes
reads it anyway:
someone lost this;
someone else thought they might come back.

I cannot tell you
how many are found.
Probably not most.
The finder cannot tell you either.
The finder did not wait.

That is the whole of it:
a kindness done in the direction
of someone who may not return,
by someone who will never know,
set at eye height
in the rain.