Wednesday Poems

Estranged, acrylic on canvas, 30” x 30”

Phil Ochs’ song “There But for Fortune” comes to mind often these days, with
addiction frequently in the news. Most of the time the reports focus on the unhoused,
the tent neighbourhoods in cities and smaller communities, and the tragic death toll
from drug overdoses. The addictions I’ve experienced weren’t drugs, they were
alcohol and cigarettes, both of which I was able, eventually, to kick.  So today,
two poems. The first has to do with the years I used alcohol as a stress reliever
(Rough Edges, from The Speed of the Wheel Is Up to the Potter; Quarry Press);
the second, with my awkwardness around street people in need
(Eye Contact, from Bewildered Rituals, Polestar Press). As the refrain in Phil Ochs’
song says: “There but for fortune, go you or I.”

Rough Edges

Coming home, I am a razor
sawing through the purple hue
and scent of a spring evening,
rough edges slashing silk
to permanent ruin.

Each sip of wine nestles me
gently into muffled cloud, yet I
want to hurl this drink at the wall.

In an instant of no particular decision,
the air is thick with crystal slivers ─
white paint, a sudden burgundy mural
of dribbling fingers.

I try to erase this witness
to my weakness.  Nothing works.
I invite no-one over,
afraid of questions ─
what caused those faded marks,
now pink rivers spilling out
from posters too small
to conceal articulate stains …

(What could I say,
lifting my favourite red
to lips in idle conversation.)

So I spend nights alone
toasting failures,
eyeing the clean canvas
of another wall.

Eye Contact


Days repeat themselves in a grey
weight of clouds, pressed against
her shoulders like a drenched coat.
On this street, she reflects
an absence of trees ─ seems only
a remote flower, a petal
sealed within a bud that spring
keeps missing.

I've been striding past her
every day now, for weeks.
Each time, my body taut
as a thread about to break,
as if it will
if I look straight at her,
smile and nod when she holds
out her hand for a quarter.

I pass into the store,
pretend I do not hear
her winced plea,
knowing I'll save the change
for her anyway ─ will come out
head clamped to avoid her glance,
drop the silver where I expect
her palm to be.

But yesterday, she'd
curled her fingers to her coat
against the cold, and the sound
of money tickling concrete
broke my practiced trance.

For an instant, our eyes met awkwardly.
Then mine sidled away like thieves
and her gaze spilled to the pavement
to capture metal seeds.