Premature ghosts slowly drift
through urine-stained Granville Street, sleeping
in doorways, curled around dreams
that have no shape anymore, since cold
has seeped too deep into their bones.
They find a different kind of solace
in the sharp kiss of a needle,
one that promises heaven
but leaves an aftertaste of hell,
with no passion left in limbs
that dance now to synthetic heartbeats.
Meth, opioids, other street drugs claim
a spot on the pavement, offering
communion with the concrete, the dark
like a stern overlord,
sending spirits further down
its hopeless abyss.
Until dawn reveals
its own soft blade, peeling open dawn,
inviting one youth to a final audience
as his breath falters, a wisp ascending.
With his flea-ridden dog and blanket
sewn by a concerned grandmother,
his spirit unthreads –
unfurls from the spool of his flesh.
The divine emerges, appearing as
a churning, ancestral storm
there is no protection against.
We are all the temporary, contained breath
of its raging beautiful wind.
The youth, astonished,
finds himself, his worth,
at the threshold of forever,
and there, in this liminal space,
the street a distant memory, his bare soul
is released into the arms of the unknowable,
a wanderer stepping off the map of the world.
David Pring-Mill’s poetry has appeared in Ariel Chart, Poetry Quarterly, Boston Literary Magazine, East Coast Literary Review, FIVE:2:ONE, and many other literary magazines. He has worked extensively as a journalist. You can visit his website at www.pring-mill.com.