Where is The Poetry?

Where is the poetry in today?

A hot, muggy day filled with banking, 

groceries, pet supplies, 

hair care needs, 

bus rides to and fro. 

to be greeted by the cheerful bank teller; to see students and grandmothers; parents with their children or wee ones in strollers; moving around the city, 

it is too easy for me to be 

critical of how people walk or talk; 

picking at the minutia flowing all around me; a Babel of languages rippling through the hot afternoon.

to feel the kindness of the young man 

who called out from his bicycle: “Be careful” 

when I crossed the street;

seeing the tiredness on the face

of the young mother next to me on the bus,

to hear the laughing chatter of teenagers 

in their last days of summer before school.

This is the poetry of the city.

“Poetry is what happens when nothing else can.”

~ Charles Bukowski, poet, novelist, writer

(1920 - 1994)