Published in Star*Line, Fall 2013
Peaked green woolen cap
clamped over spilling shaggy ringlets,
goat-eyed, crude lips puckered
amid the curled fire of his beard,
he heaves into reed pipes,
while his Jack Russell dances
on stiff hind legs, tongue lolling.
A third of the soot-grimed sidewalk
they occupy, hindering the flow of foot
traffic in a grudging claim for charity.
Always the beggar’s thick lower half is covered
by a woolen blanket. Always he snarls,
this hairy obstacle we dodge
in our hurry to work or school.
Homeward bound, I find he still pipes tunes:
the sough of silver water rippling among ferns and moss.
And as I drop my euro into his woven pretzel
basket with its goat’s head handle,
the tight blanket over his form
shows a hint of cloven hoof,
of an ancient god of goatish ways and lust.
And I feel the loss of his kind diminish me
as I hurry down the pavement for a dinging tram
that calls our herd home. In my ear
his tunes hum of a time before a tram’s
electric hunger, a time when we with nature
created a quieter world around us,
a time before our lives was machined.