Hastings is closed off from Main Street
all the way down to Pigeon Park.
Cops, fire trucks, floodlights
making night into day.
The crowds grow, hoping
for a show. People set up
lawn chairs in the middle
of Hastings like they’re at a drive-in.
Skateboarders fly down the emptiness
like flies skimming a pond,
zigzagging around everything.
It’s like a street party
or the gathering for a town hanging.
A twenty-year-old jumper in debt to his dealer
has climbed over the railing
on the roof across the street.
I sit at my window
drinking a beer, thinking
about wild horses running in the rain.
Cops roam around telling the shouters to shut up.
The copper on the bullhorn bellows
“Please stop telling the poor man to jump”
Finally they talk the young dude down.
We all cheer as if the Canucks
have just scored the game-winning goal.
“Welfare Wednesdays Kill More People than Bombs”
Copyright © 2017 by Henry Doyle
Geist Magazine, Number 104, Spring 2017.