Confession to Montgomery, Asleep on the Church Steps
If I walk quietly by
it is not to avoid disturbing you,
but rather myself. What
could I give you
but another bagel, the
boiled dough of nothingness
rising in cloudy water,
delaying, perhaps, another
guilty twinge. You have no
answers but when you
speak to the air, sometimes
a smile creaks through
the broken words, and I
think even in this cloistered
darkness we may close
the circle between halves
and might-have-beens,
an understanding, if only
in the language of bread
and coffee and the
disregarded. But today I stride
on, without pause, counting
on nothing that can’t be
pocketed or spoken aloud,
my steps echoing down
the alley and its secrets,
along the crosswalk’s painted
guides, under the sagging
power lines and through
your streetlight’s dim halo.
This first appeared on the blog in January 2016, and was published in Compassion Anthology in March 2019. I have not seen the man who inspired this poem in over three years. I hope he has found shelter and kindness.
This poem went straight to the heart.
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Thank you, Liz. I still wonder about him — he was one of those living on the periphery, always around but never truly nearby. Where did he go?
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I hope he has, too. I love how in the final lines, under *his* streetlight, you seem the transient, dispossessed one.
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I really was the transient one. He lived there (or at least slept nearby), and I was just going to work.
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