We don’t have boulevards to forget

Our dreams lie broken on dirty streets

Nicotine stained fingers prod for meaning

Calloused hands wring out the last

Drops of chance we believed were waiting

Don’t tell me about hope and the possibility

Of what may come

I see it, smell it all around me, the hope

It stares me in the face, around every corner

Hangs from light posts and street signs

Flows through the gutters like paper boats

Made from yesterday’s news

It’s been dropped, thrown, torn to pieces

Left, to drift on the wind

It’s stepped over, walked through, trampled on

Trapped in a cycle of rot and growth

Yes, there’s hope, it’s all around us

But how many are too tired to stop and pick it up

Too weak to carry it, along with everything else

That fills their arms, lives on their backs

Sometimes, we manage to tuck some away

A fragment here, a fragment there, hope

Left waiting, as we check an empty pocket

For the moment to present itself, maybe tomorrow

Will it still be there, whispering through footsteps

Trying to keep up, crying out to the forgotten

As it fades to black, accepting its fate

To fertilize one broken, one forsaken, one wrong

Path after another, as their polished boulevards

Gleam passively in the distance

From my poetry collection, Left Waiting, available from Amazon.