QUESTIONS TO A PANHANDLER

If I give you some

what will I give the others?

Were you not on forty-seventh

with that make-shift sign?

Now it's forty-third

and your rent is not enough

paid up to stay indoors?

And what of the two

nameless children on the sign

are they on forty-fifth

or are they inside

the folds of your coat?

Did city officials design

the streets so narrow

that I had to trip,

turn, feel concern

for your hunger, the rent

the children, and a way

of life so foreign to me?

T.A. Delmore