By The Canal Poem by Tentative Poet

here, beside the slow brown canal
where the sluggish water drags

discarded dreams away, where
old men, bored with their winter

lives, throw baited nylon over
the rusted guardrail and wait for

hours, not caring one way or the
other, many have lived half their

lives in the same cramped unit
of the same decrepit moldering

blocks, three generations in one
place, pacing the old corridors

day by day, each one another tiny
conquest.