"SCAVENGER" BY JOHN DONLAN

Not sure what I'm worth – something, anyway.
There's love and work
and I know how to work.
What's thrown out drives a rickety kind of economy

on rusting shopping carts. Down city lanes
not yet totally asphalt, amaranth
and other weeds ("a plant whose virtues
have not yet been discovered")

make things more homey, more human somehow.
But that's just me.
Jesus, the wrecks outside the Army and Navy –
Pat, how've you been? – face grey, hollowing, going ...

Hopped up, he bent my ear with his big projects.
Under the Skytrain Millennium line a drainpipe's trickle
feeds an ochre puddle and its clouds of miso – Algae! –
and its blue skin, oil-like, clinging in sheets, alive.

From "Spirit Engine"


	Scavenger