Random Acts of Poetry

Random Acts of Poetry

Flashback

There I was--
in a city named "Was"--
an old man returning
to where I had lived,
years before,

when my gun was for rent,
when I knew each stone
as a jewel,
and lived like a bandit
in a getaway car.

I saw myself
before then, younger,
a laborer marching to my job,
shuddering with exertion:
a builder of roads,

a hardened operator,
outside, eight hours
in the cold sun,
given to using my hands,
but disowned by the job

and wanting to hide,
the way a tree hides
in a forest,
the way a man
loses himself in a city.
_