in which the narrator is asked for spare change

for two Canadian dollars –

a medal for a place

between second and first –

I take possession of all poems

written by a man called E.J Pratt.

then, for three, I take the bus downtown

spend twenty-five on dinner and a beer –

Czechvar, 500ml, with a neck of golden foil –

before a woman introduces herself

as homeless, in need

of a hostel bed to sleep away

another day of hell, to dream of abuses

her father meted out when he got drunk

and I tell her to her toothless face

that I haven’t got any change

bury my toes between the cobblestones

look askance at the unloading dock

which lines up perfectly

with Kitsilano

on the other side of road-dust

dusky waters –

those freighters in the bay

must wait their turn

to come in and use the red

monstrosity

in order, then, to leave –

they’re parked like cars might be

or a pod of shadowed whales

come to surface for the purple clouds

and a few vital gulps of the balmy air –

there could be prestige cars in some

tonnes of Dollarama miscellany

in others – it’s all unloaded

with the same machine – screened

signed off and stacked for later phases –

a Porsche Cayenne might sit atop

a crate of tit-shaped stress balls

this very moment, at which time

the woman, whose eyes are green

but wreathed in striking yellow

wishes me goodnight and is on her way –

one, as this guy Pratt might have said

of the multitudinous

     voices that would tell

of the move of life                      invincible.