Shopping Cart

Racing stripes on a shopping cart
Bicycle handle tassles taped to the ends of the bar
Red rag on protruding pole
Customized personalized individualized
Plodding steps pushing down overgrown sidewalks
Looking for a place to park and spend the night
With no thugs to steal it while you sleep
or bash your brains in for worthless trinket treasures
in 90 degree summer nights or pouring rain
or police to run you off to another jurisdiction
where you are not their problem and those with homes
pretend you do not exist so they can sleep without guilt
Those simple things that you have, the little radio with dead batteries,
the extra shirt and the Steelers license plate you got for free
In winter, you guard your blankets and coat with your sleepless life
Little things matter when you have nothing else

By Virgil Huston

Biography:

Virgil Huston is an Iraq and Afghanistan war veteran and social activist who believes poetry is therapeutic and can change the world. He is old enough to have had a draft card during Vietnam and first saw the Grateful Dead in 1973. He has an eclectic food blog at http://cookingwithlittlebuddy.com that is dedicated to the dog that picked him as her human.