AS YOUNG AS I NO LONGER FEEL
by John Grey
I must have been young sometime.
Like when the temperature
was as bitter as a cancer victim’s prayer.
And I was a foot of snow deep
in women trouble.
Those were my early twenties.
Had to be.
For one thing, the wind
doesn’t whip these days
like it did back then.
As demoralizing, as cruel,
as Simon Legree’s lashes.
I was waiting for a bus.
If my heart weren’t so hurt,
it would have froze,
Then some homeless guy
joined me at the stop.
He wasn’t going anywhere.
unless my presence was a destination.
I was in my early twenties,
eager to be kind,
gave him conversation
and a few quarters.
“What happened to you?”
I asked.
Despite the chill,
he rolled up his sleeve.
His arm was as scarred as a warrior’s
“Trying to kick the habit,” he said.
Made my woman trouble
seem like a pin prick
to his invidious syringe.
Must have been my youth.
Haven’t ridden a bus in years.
Haven’t spoken to a down-and-outer
in just as long a time.
I associate a fresh face
with public transport,
an optimism with finding
an empty seat.
Even a sanguinity
upset here and there
by failing to say the right thing.
And bright eyes looking back
through light snow fall
at the guy who was so very much
worse off than me.
I said to myself,
“If only there was something
I could do.”
Must have been really young.
I don’t recognize that voice.
About the author
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in
Hawaii Pacific Review, Dalhousie Review and Qwerty with work upcoming
in Blueline, Willard and Maple and Clade Song.
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