Rag & Bone Man Of 97035
by Scot Siegel


_____________- after WB Yeats’s “The Circus Animals’ Desertion”

At the end of the drive
a streetlight

stays on through the day
& my bones ache

from the music
of a hundred thunderheads

curtseying like the bride
in the dream of the convict––

The veteran down our street
lives with his father

I admire his balance
two hundred pounds of rags

& bones on a wobbly
one-speed––

The way he rides up
& down our street, blending

with the neighborhood
children






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