“Homeless Man on a Sidewalk” by Ken Damerow

Photo Credit: Jamaal Cooks

Ahead, I see him there asleep in the sun
slanting through a Motor City morning.
Avoiding contact won’t be difficult 
as his eyes are closed, but still I hurry 

because I’m anxious he’ll awake and see
me in suit and tie and briefcase glide past. 
I’m not the only one who’s eying his
cardboard pallet, rusted shopping cart, and

 the pickle bucket filled with who-knows-what,
coffee table turned upside down, dirty 
Adidas slipped over two legs, souls up,
bulging plastic bags, a kid’s-stained backpack,

a scrolled umbrella, neatly folded tarps— 
We are looking. We are not. We wonder,
and we do not. What could he think of us?
Are there dreams inside his head that live still?  

Awareness is a tricky thing and not. 
If it takes a village to raise a child, 
what does it take for a homeless adult?  
I guess we know but don’t really care to. 

Artist Statement

As a poet, I look for what Seamus Heaney refers to as "the music of what happens" in anything I read or experience. I love playing around on the page, the freedom and childlike delight in forming the words and sounds, rearranging, molding like a sculptor realizing not necessarily the perfect form but a form, one of many possible ways given to wonder and reflect. Sometimes a poem will miraculously fall out of my head fully formed, and I'm grateful for that. But more often, poems for me are the result of countless versions of slapping words and thoughts on the page and then endlessly playing around with them, like a child in a sandbox, to see what happens. 

Ken Damerow is a poet based in mid-Michigan whose work has appeared in Umbrella Factory Magazine, The Academy of the Heart and Mind, Penstricken, and The Rise Up Review. He edits Clockhouse Journal and holds an MFAW degree from Goddard College and a BA from Michigan State University.