You were sitting on the bridge

I could hardly see your face

Eyes fixed to a patch of ground

Just to the right of an old battered starbucks cup

Dim memory of someone kind

Someone who had time to stop and talk.

Methodically, rhythmically, your fingers drummed

Against the bent dirty rim

Of the old battered tired grubby

Starbucks cup

Your memory of that moment’s kindness

Slipping away faster

Than the transient life of the recyclable cardboard

Of the old battered tired grubby worn out

Starbucks cup.

Your eyes refused to look up

Saving me the embarrassment

Momentary fleeting guilt

Of averting my gaze

Only your frantic drumming fingers

Signify life

Pounding relentlessly

At the folds of the old battered tired grubby worn out hopeless

Starbucks cup

Drumming to the endless rhythm

The clopping march of five hundred busy legs

Fleeting unspeaking companions on the ha’penny bridge

Well-fed, warm, busy people

Well-meaning , useful, employed people

Well-intentioned, nervous, self-righteous people

People like me

Whose lives are too neatly packaged

To stop on the bridge

And ask why you are there

Shivering between threadbare blankets

Half closed eyes fixed to the patch of ground

Your silent plea conveniently inobtrusive

Your old battered tired grubby worn out hopeless weather-beaten

Starbucks cup

Never shaken,

Your measley collection of unwanted coppers

Never rattled impatiently

To unsettle my hasty rushing past

My inadvertent quickened step

As I pass you by

Reinforcing the old lie

That the old battered tired grubby worn out hopeless weather beaten worthless rejected

Starbucks cup

Is a picture of yourself.

 

Forgive me, nameless companion.

Forgive me, anonymous friend.

 

 ‘Every time we walk past a homeless person on the bridge and avert our eyes, we reinforce their self image that they have no value.’

Dedicated to the work on the streets and most of all to the people I have walked past.

 Tiffy Allen

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