AT THE EDGE OF HISTORY
I am not really here nor
will I be,
but nonetheless
a bum arrives out of
the thin rain
pushing a shopping cart
jammed with abandoned treasures,
old newspapers, broken idols,
the pale, upturned faces of empties,
and when I lay down
in the afternoon,
suffering from an unspecified
heartache,
I can feel through the floor
of all fifty states
the sobbing of an orphan engine.
Howie Good, a journalism professor at the State University of New York at New Paltz, is the author of three poetry chapbooks, Death of the Frog Prince (2004) and Heartland (2007), both from FootHills Publishing, and Strangers & Angels (2007) from Scintillating Publications. He was recently nominated for the second time for a Pushcart Prize.