DETRITUS

She stood at the edge of the curb
holding onto her shopping cart
piled high with leavings from other lives
wondering, I guess, which way to go.
On the warm autumn day
she was dressed already for winter
perhaps just to have a place to keep
the sweaters and skirts she owned.
The orange hair under her man’s hat
would have served a circus clown,
but there was nothing to laugh at here
where other people live in houses
while she lives out of a grocery cart.

If she had ever been attached to it,
the spinning and whirring industry
of America had cast her off
or perhaps had just unwittingly lost her.
She looked through me or past me
as I walked by her on the street
as if to say don’t try to speak to me
because I am not attached to anything
except perhaps forgotten garbage.
So I obliged her and went on my way
wondering as I walked down the street
how to sweep her from my mind. A homeless man found a place in the courtyard of the Mission Valley Library where he would not be chased away.