Mickey at the Rail   Done with it, he mutters when you ask him what county, what town. The wind is so cold, it smells of the sea and the smoke, the dim light down in steerage, the reek of the old woman puking in her apron — she won’t make it across, the same as lots of them. Sick of life, that’s what they are, no-counts, he says. You ask him again, ask his name. Mick— he starts to say, looking away, cuts himself short. McGuire? McGuffin? But he’s got the chat in him if you press: an orphan at fifty, no kid anymore, free of the woman who left him, free of more than that . . .                      He pulls at his cap, silent, stands and stares at a hole the size of Ireland.     © Michael Fleming Brattleboro, Vermont February 2010