| |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
Douglas Tanoury Alter Road In summer children play in the front yards With hair disheveled and dirty faces Amid wooden frame homes Ill kempt and needing repair That line the street and sit wedged Side by side and close to the road Looking neither right nor left In silence I pass them The children continue to play as if I were invisible Like a visitor from a nether world or some ghost From the hereafter who has come down their street Just to say hi how are ya But my mouth cannot bear the banality Of such an average greeting to interrupt their play For they are to me the poorly dressed reminders Of a past troublesome and grim Of days when childhood rested on me Like an affliction both serious and dire On this dark street like a Dickens novel If I stop to talk to one child I would be addressing my own pain On a street crowded with regrets Where problems pile up on the curb Like the belongings of evicted tenants Want to respond to this poem? Do it here! Return to Detroit Poems |
|
| ||||||||||||||||||||