In summer children play in the front yards
With hair disheveled and dirty faces
Amid wooden frame homes
Ill kempt and needing repair
That line the street and sit wedged
Side by side and close to the road

Looking neither right nor left
In silence I pass them
The children continue to play as if I were invisible
Like a visitor from a nether world or some ghost
From the hereafter who has come down their street
Just to say hi how are ya

But my mouth cannot bear the banality
Of such an average greeting to interrupt their play
For they are to me the poorly dressed reminders
Of a past troublesome and grim
Of days when childhood rested on me
Like an affliction both serious and dire

On this dark street like a Dickens novel
If I stop to talk to one child
I would be addressing my own pain
On a street crowded with regrets
Where problems pile up on the curb
Like the belongings of evicted tenants

Doug Tanoury, grew up in Detroit and still lives in the area with his wife and three children. Doug has been published in Writer's Digest, Ego Flights Alura Quarterly and A Year On The Avenue (Two Dog Press). Online he has been published by The Pittsburgh Quarterly, Eclectica, Poetry Magazine, Agnieszka's Dowry, Recursive Angel, The Astrophysicist's Tango Partner Speaks and others. The greatest influence on Doug and his work was the 7th grade poetry anthology used in Sister Debra's English class: Reflections On A Gift Of Watermelon Pickle And Other Modern Verse, Stephen Dunning, Edward Lueders and Hugh Smith, (c)1966 by Scott Foresman & Company.

Athens Avenue Poetry Circle at: http://www.geocities.com/Athens/6915/