Sometimes we look this gift horse —life—
in the mouth, ungrateful
as tramps, uncouth as
the angry young man,
the last just fella
who always
comes in last;
Some of us sleep in the rain,
soaked to the skin
under a nebulous sky
without parasol or prayer,
we toil and tremble in the spit
but never get cleansed.
Sometimes in the last place
you look, in a corner
of your own dust, you find
a fragment of heaven,
fleeting before it is forgotten;
Sometimes morning breaks
over sun-soaked sheets
and you stretch, somehow
taller than you were
yesterday, while today stretches
out like a bounty,
an orchard at apple-time,
And so you take this
moment, this farthing
and forsake it in your pocket,
a coin you found heads-up
on a city sidewalk
amid the concrete
chasms, the chimera,
and the cold,
calculated hopelessness—
in the mouth, ungrateful
as tramps, uncouth as
the angry young man,
the last just fella
who always
comes in last;
Some of us sleep in the rain,
soaked to the skin
under a nebulous sky
without parasol or prayer,
we toil and tremble in the spit
but never get cleansed.
Sometimes in the last place
you look, in a corner
of your own dust, you find
a fragment of heaven,
fleeting before it is forgotten;
Sometimes morning breaks
over sun-soaked sheets
and you stretch, somehow
taller than you were
yesterday, while today stretches
out like a bounty,
an orchard at apple-time,
And so you take this
moment, this farthing
and forsake it in your pocket,
a coin you found heads-up
on a city sidewalk
amid the concrete
chasms, the chimera,
and the cold,
calculated hopelessness—