The Litter I See Project

within the quiet a hum barely audible… is it me?
the earth rotating? the moon pulling or the sun calling?
or is it me? my insides awhir with windmill thoughts
—of the dead or the near dead
David Bowie once said “We are arriving and departing at the same time.”
and I think what of those discarded        dirty
so easy to walk past

I once dated a homeless man
we met at the Friendship Centre
that evening he wore a bone choker
deerskin vest   fringed
long black hair    wavy
bare chest    brown
leather pants
I thought I could smell the ancestors on him
or was it his borrowed clothing     the Hollywood makeup?
he had been in a film that day      so clean
I could feel his spirit    strong    musky
within him a sinewy quiet
and when I closed my eyes I saw him on a horse
on a hill with others
arm raised with a feathered coup stick in hand
he had touched many enemies

I prayed to know him

our first date he took me to English Bay
showed me the beech tree he slept under
sprawling limbs provided cover
green shelter    over grass bed
he tells of rain and how when the downpour comes
he walks    prays all night
a holy man in the city

next time I see him he is in a long black leather coat
an extra in The Crow that day
not always clean        often hungry but he never complained
did not want a home        preferred to sleep outdoors
his place under that beech tree

he had no phone but did call late one night
his arm broken     attacked by the youth on Granville Street
I can still hear him crying on the phone    my young son asleep in the other room
no I cannot pick you up…  no, sorry     you cannot stay here
dating a homeless man is complicated
after dinner you leave him on the corner        rain or shine
he walks away and you hope he stays away from Granville Street

 

♦

Jónína Kirton A prairie born Métis/Icelandic poet and facilitator currently lives in the unceded territory of the Coast Salish people. Her first collection of poetry, page as bone ~ ink as blood, released in April 2015 by Talonbooks, has been described as “restorative, intimate poetry, drawing down ancestral ideas into the current moment’s breath.”

 

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“any attempt to decode is only a looking for patterns, for story,”