Sunday Poem: ‘Where He Sleeps’
A Poem About Capitalism
I’m not sure if I’ve posted this in the past, so I apologize if you’ve read it before.
I wrote this about a decade ago, after my book As An Alien In A Land Of Promise. It seemed a good follow-up to Friday’s essay.
Where He Sleeps
The slick smell of goose crap
signals spring. Olive drab
jacket, sleeping bag, tent.
Screw the shelter. Mornings
remain cold, though the frost
is gone and grassless ground
once brick-like thaws to mud.
Easier this way, like
patrols in the Mekong.
Easier alone. Off
the highway in densest
thicket, dark and light, shadows
and sudden sun. Birdsong,
brake-squeal, the chatter
of crickets. Scent of pine
and diesel smoke. Morning
coffee from the 7-
Eleven and the paper.
When it rains, he slides across
the roadway, ducks beneath
the bridge ramp to stay dry. If you missed it, here is Friday’s essay:
Now They Come for the Homeless
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The Trump administration has declared a war on the homeless — not homelessness as a social failure, but the individual men and women who are without housing and forced to live on the streets or in forested areas.