by Mary Saracino
The penniless men wield blue
shopping carts down city sidewalks,
wending their way past a gurgling creek
that ekes a path through mountains
of over-priced condos.
Vagrant boxcars derailed
from the mighty engine of commerce,
they escape from the wrong side
of the tracks, wheel their worldly goods — soiled sleeping bags,
a tossed-away orange, a half-eaten
ham sandwich, a purple hat
scavenged from a green dumpster — to the teeming
urban corner, where their outlaw hands
cradle wind-torn cardboard signs — Will work for food;
Anything helps, God bless — and their
freight train eyes scan passing cars
searching for the wayward engineer
who failed to claim his missing cargo.
Mary Saracino is a novelist, memoir writer, and poet who lives in Denver, CO. Her newest novel The Singing of Swans is to be published by Pearlsong Press in the fall of 2006.