Grove Street Poem by Barry Middleton

I remember looking for mercy
not the street but the hospital
did someone really tell me Grove Street
that was in a day when memory was alive

it seemed a heartless place
where the hopeless sought out modern miracles
the hypodermics were still made of glass
finely machined by diamonds

but there was barbaric medicine
sleepless nightmares for a dying giant
and rites of passage for a boy
I turned and ran from the smell of despair

I never went back to Grove Street
a few years later the phone rang
my father died at home near his window
outside the dogwood bloomed again that spring