Poetry

Spring 2008

 

 

Evelyn Duncan

The Beggar's Hands

Late one afternoon on Tower Bridge
I drop fifty pence into a beggar's hat
because his hands are like my father's,
knobbed with arthritis, shiny and swollen.
Below, on the Thames, eight young men in a boat,
tyros hopelessly out of sync,
wave their oars every which way
like legs of a damaged insect.
On the far bank, wet stone steps
exposed by low tide ascend
to a building shadowed in waning light.

Back in Yonkers, my mother, newly widowed,
frets about late mail, loses my London address.
My shabby flat looks out on
a street lined with flowering trees.
I walk on white petals all that difficult spring.

 

 

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