Hook

 I was only a young man
In those days.
 On that evening
The cold was so God damned
Bitter there was nothing.

Nothing.
 I was in trouble
With a woman, and there was nothing
There but me and dead snow.


I stood on the street corner
In Minneapolis, lashed
This way and that.

Wind rose from some pit,
Hunting me.

Another bus to Saint Paul
Would arrive in three hours,
If I was lucky.


Then the young Sioux
Loomed beside me, his scars
Were just my age.


Ain't got no bus here
A long time, he said.

You got enough money
To get home on?

What did they do
To your hand? I answered.

He raised up his hook into the terrible starlight
And slashed the wind.


Oh, that? he said.

I had a bad time with a woman.
 Here,
You take this.


Did you ever feel a man hold
Sixty-five cents
In a hook,
And place it
Gently
In your freezing hand?

I took it.

It wasn't the money I needed.

But I took it.

Biography | Poems | Best Poems | Short Poems | Quotes | Email Poem |

Poems are below...