Unvanquished

                        Low
                    sun
                finds a
            tar paper
        shack, by the train track,
    slumped one day deeper in debris.
As day fades, slowly umber shadows swing and taper.

At last, the day star sends a shaft of light from bright decline,
through the shack’s encrusted windows, in rainbow-tinted shine.
The sills are filled with bottle glass, crowded against the panes,
placed there by the resident–discards from passing trains.
No rose-windowed cathedral boasts colors half as fine.

Passengers, in passing, pity his decrepit home.
    They can’t see the place’s glory,
        nor his vital spark,
            nor how he
                beats back
                    the
                        dark.


from Sailor in the Rain and Other Poems
© 2007 Denis M. Garrison