This poem was based on a list I've been compiling of people and sights (mostly people) that I see/have seen on my weekly commutes from my home in Burnaby to downtown Vancouver. It only takes 20-25 minutes, but I'll be damned if that little time isn't full to the gills with interesting things to see.
From dusk into darkness
I am a bundle of coat, scarf and glove
Curled calmly by a heater and shot
Through a haze of polluted trees
And roofs of tin and red tile
Snow-capped mountains tinged pink
A murder of crows on their way to roost
Pockmarking a sky marbled with clouds
By me sit o'er-ladened mothers offering
Candy to pig-tailed children
Withered men whose gazes go nowhere
As they make their way home
Boys full of pride and life
Laughing loudly into touchscreen mouth-pieces
And tired women with too much weight
In their bruised eyes
Wrapped in my bundle I take to the streets
Through crowds and smoke to a second heater
I pass unguarded piles of rags and
Cardboard signs next to coin-filled coffee cups
Cracked lips pursed around cigarettes
Held in leathery hands
Buskers with sax, trumpet, fiddle, guitar
Microphone and rugged voice
Crammed in a sea of felt jackets and
iPod wires and sweaty armpits I
Reach my destination
Upon my return, I am greeted by greenish lights
And the hollow racket of a train on its track
There sits a man with a
Bloated, burnt and purpling jaw
Crooked teeth poking over a bottom lip
That hangs out thick and fleshy
By him dances a boy whose eyes are
Obscured by thick sunglasses
And whose body bends to a ghostly beat
Provoking me into a quiet smile
From dusk into darkness
I am calm and unafraid
I am confident and comfortable
For I know I'm among friends.
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