Sometimes a poem wants to be released before it is quite done. This one feels that way. This photo was taken by daughter, in Chambe’ry France :)

Last Night

Last night,
I saw a woman crossing a four lane road
and her grocery bag broke,
scattering the contents.
It was raining and dark,
the street, a cobra, hissing and black.
God damn it she cursed
and I heard
why can’t anything go right?
why am I always struggling?
why am I always alone?

I was walking to get a massage
and wearing an empty backpack,
as afterward, I planned to buy ingredients for soup.
I get massages the way people visit the emergency room,
triaging anxiety, sadness, fatigue.

Waiting for the masseur in the warm red room,
my face splitting a perforated paper towel on the head rest,
I saw that for days I was dimming.
Walking in the cold rain
was a continuation of my erasure,
so much so,
as I passed wooded areas,
the possibility of being drug
into the bushes appealed slightly.

I see now as I write,
that I could have filled the backpack
and walked back with the woman to the nearby store
where we got a plastic bag.
And that my kindness might have been
balm she desperately needed.
And I imagine as well,
that she placed the items in her coat,
carrying on with renewed resilience.

The perfect title for this poem hasn’t arrived yet
and I have written and deleted
several endings,
sorting when I have and have not been
human, humane.
We never know
how we live on in one another.