No One To Please Or Appease Poem by Uriah Hamilton

I drift down
the dark sidewalks
of the frigid midnight
shivering in the rain.

I give pocket change
to homeless men
and spare sandwich bread
to stray dogs on the run.

Back a thousand steps
in a lonely life,
there was someone
I didn't appreciate properly,
maybe a parent,
maybe a former wife.

The girl at the gas station
got lost in my imagination,
the sparkle in her eyes,
the tattoo that must be
above her cleavage
if it were summertime
and exposed.

Am I too old now
to disappoint
a worried father
by being with his daughter?

Are there reasons
left to repent,
ex-lovers to resent,
destiny to meet,
terrible fates to escape?

I'm resigned
to funerals and wakes
and inopportune
sunsets of regrets.