Street corner morning,
sidewalk littered:
plastic soda bottles, candy wrappers, aluminum cans—
flotsam after yesterday’s snowmelt.
When the light’s red, a man
(paper cup in hand, winter coat unbuttoned)
steps off the curb
into the sunlit lane between stopped cars.
Cradled in the crook of his arm
an improvised sign:
SEEKING HUMAN KINDNESS,
ALL MAJOR CREDIT CARDS ACCEPTED.
Inside the coffee shop,
a line of patrons stretching from counter to threshold
waiting for pastries and morning java.
Just outside,
three anxious sparrows twittering beneath the bench
where a young man sleeps, stretched out,
duffel bag for a pillow,
face turned away from us passersby.
Beside him some Samaritan has left
a lunch sandwich,
neatly wrapped in clear plastic, homemade.
I descend into the subway station:
the ever cheerful Metro hawker greets me.
At the Dunkin’ Donuts kiosk
a dark-skinned man— West Indian?—
curly gray hair under
the knit cap he wears in all seasons,
cargo bags at his feet,
hunches over an open Bible
on a pedestal table, his “lectern.”
Some days he scribbles in a notebook—sermons?—
other times, lips moving, eyes turned inward,
he recites passages to himself. Today, he lifts his head,
casts his gaze over the multitude,
hand extended, and, citing chapter and verse,
silently preaches to his congregation
entering, exiting through the turnstiles—
all of us sinners and no one in particular.
MARK PAWLAK is the author of seven poetry collections and the editor of six anthologies. His latest books are Go to the Pine: Quoddy Journals 2005–2010 (Plein Air Editions/Bootstrap Press, 2012) and Jefferson’s New Image Salon: Mashups and Matchups (Cervena Barva Press, 2010). His work has been translated into German, Polish, and Spanish, and has been performed at Teatr Polski in Warsaw. In English, his poems have appeared widely in anthologies and in New American Writing, Mother Jones, Poetry South, The Saint Ann’s Review, and The World, among many others. For more than 33 years Pawlak has been an editor of the Brooklyn-based Hanging Loose, one of the oldest independent literary journals and presses in the country. He supports his poetry habit by teaching mathematics at UMass Boston, where he is Director of Academic Support Programs. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
