This poem comes from an actual occurrence that happened years ago. The memory is so vivid as is the question that still haunts me.

  Stolen story; please report.

  From the window

  of my car

  I see dusk fall.

  Down a side street

  walks a crumpled man

  with a small girl

  on his shoulders.

  Her hair catches

  the scattering sunlight.

  Are they headed home

  to a crumbling apartment

  in the distant rundown neighborhood?

  I turn away.

  To my right,

  glass sky scrapers

  scrape the sky.

  Wealth and poverty

  side by side.

  There is not enough

  and never enough.

  I continue down the free way,

  haunted by the small girl

  with the shining hair.

  What will become of her?