City-Poor

Evening shadows
and ramshackle houses
make a nice potpourri
saplings are sapped
in the flow of life
and become
worn and tattered.

Fathers flee
for better times
with drunken friends
paycheck gone
and hungry bellies
lose another morsel
to salve
an empty feeling.

Little ones
who sit
by dirty window-panes
and stare
empty thoughts
into rain-dripping
city streets
that do not respond
take heed children
and overcome
this lonely land.

© Richard L. Provencher

First published
by Rae-Art Limited, Ottawa
Poets of Canada 1969

Note: This was my first
Anthology published poem.