Sleeping Rough - April 27 2022

 

Sleeping Rough

April 27 2022

A restless night

for the man under the bridge

in a small orange tent

that's seen better days.

Passersby

strolling through the park

judge him.

Little kids are curious,

but their parents shoo them away.

The police

who have more urgent things to do

may or may not

train powerful flashlights through the mesh

and make him move.

He curls up against

his mongrel dog

sharing body heat.

A water basin freezes.

The cold penetrates,

up from frozen earth

and through the frigid air.

Homeless friends

spend winter nights in shelters,

but there are fights

and people steal

and smelly men snore.

So he'd rather be free

than warm.

The young man

who never thought he'd come to this

would be horrified.

The ex-wife

would nod knowingly.

The children

who don't even know he's alive

have busy lives

somewhere else.

But the steadfast dog

is going nowhere.

Certainly not the shelter,

which does not welcome pets

no matter what.

The bridge

doesn't keep the snow off.

It blows in from the sides,

water, mixed with salt

drips from the overpass.

Nowadays

the correct term isn't “homeless”

it's “unhoused”.

Because words have meaning,

and this is not who he is

but how.

And anyway, he has a home,

as cramped and cold as it is.

I was scanning headlines, and some words caught my eye — “What Da Homeless Man . . . “ — and for some reason this poem this poem immediately began to form in my head. Somehow, in the writing, it became another dog poem. Which I'm grateful for: a nice diversion from the rather earnest social commentary that otherwise runs through it.

I'm often suspicious of euphemistic coinages like unhoused. But in this case, I applaud the new word. It's objectively true. It's free, at least for now, of the baggage and implied judgment contained in homeless. And it carries within it a simple solution, as “housing first” experiments have demonstrated.

I think the implication of the ending is also that wherever his dog is becomes home. Home is not about place; it's about relationship.

I'm particularly pleased with the 5th stanza. I like the way it implies a whole back story, but leaves it to the reader to fill in the blanks. And it also humanizes him. Because we identify with the young man's certainty: this happens to other people; surely, like him, we would never come to this.