The Homeless Man on Prairie
I didn’t mean to startle him,
this old man with the rough grey face,
dozing on the doorstep of an abandoned house.
And I’m sure it wasn’t my fault
that his hair was frozen white.
Or that the hand that tried to cover his face
was scarred and worn.
Or that the cuff of his shirt was ragged, buttonless,
and soiled like his surroundings.
I was innocent of the battering his brow had taken,
or the string that tied his baggy pants.
If anything, I would have laid claim
to his blue eyes, and the light in them
from within: not the moon, not the streetlamp.
For they stared at me unwaveringly,
offset the grimness of his mouth,
the obvious savagery of the life he was living.
He was beaten down, sure enough,
failed in everything he ever tried, no doubt,
through drink, drugs, bad luck or plain stupidity.
But he wouldn’t give in
was what his glare told me.
He never would give in.
But don’t chide me
if I confused his pain with triumph.
Ode to Fecundity
The street has babies
like I drop poems.
Even on frosty mornings
when the sun‘s not working,
the reproductive organs are,
and evening’s ritual involves
keeping up with contractions
and arguing over
newborns’ names.
Couples are incautious here.
They let what happens happen,
and then it shapes their world.
And it’s not like Texas redbuds blooming.
Kids can pop out any time.
So don’t let the ordinariness of the houses fool you.
This is prime breeding country.
With so many forceps at the ready,
an umbilical cord doesn’t stand a chance.
Of course, I’m not having any.
I drop poems, remember.
They’re my offspring.
They have titles like,
“Ode To An Angry Bus Driver.”
The weirdest I’ve heard
a baby tagged with on this street
is “Butterfly.”
My butterfly poems are all behind me.
But this street is doing its best
to maintain the numbers,
replace the dying,
set up the future.
It sounds like a poem
when I put it like that.
No wonder my insides ache.
The Plight of a Tourist
I’m submerged in a crowd,
a giant scrum of human bodies
pressing and squeezing,
shunting me this way, that way.
But who are these people?
I can’t wait for night
when I’m back in my hotel room,
as alone in feeling
as in fact.
Here, in this tourist town of strangers,
I am even outside the outsiders,
have forgotten more than I’ve met,
walked so many streets,
drifted as far as my legs could haul me,
but the flurry of endless faces
is wasted on me.
Come evening,
I’ll lie flat on my back,
stare up at the ceiling fan.
It will spin around and around
and get no place.
Only I have the nerve
to call that travel.
In the Marketplace of Marriage
“Only 50 American dollars
for the hand-woven rug,” he says.
It was 100 only moments before.
Soon, it will be 25.
“I have a wife and five children to feed,”
he adds.
It’s a fine rug,
but I have no way of hauling it home,
though my wife and child
would appreciate having such
colourful softness underfoot.
We are two men
in a Moroccan marketplace
who can’t escape the fact
that we’re major disappointments
to our family.
I buy a trinket for five dollars.
It saves our marriages, but barely.
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