Pinned

A young man leaned on a steel rail

and looked out through the St. John’s harbour.

Two derelict drunks leaned there beside him,

their tattered asses to the off-shore gale,

aimed as well, with a certain ardour,

at the city itself. They were all grim.

A gust hurled up a shower of sand,

stinging them, bringing their lids down hard.

It seemed a stoning, a sort of burial

by civilization, their own land.

True, they all detested it, scarred,

and felt their souls unjustly on trial,

Believing that they could, in turn, try the world,

step away with impunity, and stare back

and see everything with more accurate view:

those pennants of success unfurled

in the flap of prosperity, an obvious lack

of judgement they could not relate to.

The young man knew he might end like these

old fools whose farts opposed the wind,

blown back upon them through all seasons.

But the choppy harbour, the hurtful breeze,

the screeching gulls… it left him as a wrestler pinned

to the mat of ill-considered reasons.