To Lieutenant Columbo, Immortal Detective Of The Nagging Clue (Final Version) Poem by Mary Angela Douglas

[to the lingering happy memory of the actor, Peter Falk...]

he never finished one bowl of chili.
ate hot dogs, almost, in the park.
boiled eggs for breakfast pulled out of a raincoat pocket
too early on the scene, blinking the 'sleep' from his eyes

grabbing

canapes when he was desperate by handfuls
with a rumpled face, sleep-deprived at the galas
apologetic, slightly, party crasher of doom

couldn't hit a target. start a car.
grew dizzy in the heights, just about fainted in
the OR, couldn't find the exits.
grew seasick on the piers...
flinched at the sound of gunfire..

mostly he swallowed clues and so
sustained life.
a little hunched in a raincoat too small

for him. he made his unwanted houseguest way
in all the neighborhoods so affably confused
(his ruse of all ruses) got
told to have some cake at the back door.

that was on a good day.
they all looked down on him
but he clicked away

ticking his everything off the list
sneezing behind the drawing room curtains or
in his grey horror of a rattletrap car
with adorable, almost comatose 'Dog'
wending his way where the parking valets

looked askance. but the clue is somewhere,
that's the waltz of the off the subject banter
the one that doesn't fit with the others

like the Detective himself. the one that stands out.
and just when they think it's over and they're off the hook
and they're off his route
there he is again, snooping in the shrubbery,

dropping ciggie ashes in the object d'arte
no matter how hard they'd wished he'd just disappear
but oh dear, he's come back
and still on the same tack, drat,

having slept again in the same clothes, colloquial of speech,
confidential to a fault, wide eyed,
wafting his drugstore cigars, pacing it out

in the grand foyers
in the priceless ashtrays hey but. it's somewhere on the staircase, on the grounds
where the dear departed lay
and puzzlingly on footsteps in the spring mud
nobody tracked in. who can say?
'Boy, this is some place! ' he'd gush in Bel Air
putting them at ease and then:

did it rain on Tuesday?
reenacting it all, absorbed beyond the scene.
wherever it is they don't want you to be
you keep turning up, your head in the hothouse
popping up like an orchid or

with your dog who can't start barking
(perhaps he's giving you clues in dog language
telepathically...)
your unpaid bills wadded in one pocket
crammed in with an impossibly small notebook

while we wait to see just
what will trigger the latch and the grand detective spring
at them like a mad jack in the box with

the clue that rankles. the next to the last last question, sir,
one more thing, sir, if you don't mind. the golden ring grasped in the end by the unforgettable detective- the actor's inimitable performance

an immortal performance guaranteed to irritate the perps
and astonish us with what looks like to them
eartjhquaking baffling sudden unaccountable sagacity
so that we had infinite fun watching their faces unravel
and the schoolboy, wrap the sum, the flush of victory

sustained far beyond this week's episode...
or anything else on tv everafter.

how we wish in this evening sun that he'd come back from
mystery Heaven for a day with that
'just one more thing' the grand sweep of his hands

frankly, consoling the superior minds who thought
they'd easily outwit him and
then, the play's played out so consummately
and we can't even grasp what we've seen.
he's like the ants at the picnic who carry it all away.

without anyone seeing how it's done.
ggodbye potato salad, Lady Baltimore cake
stone cold deers in the headlights
of no mediocre sun.

mary angela douglas 26 january 2015; 13 november 2023