I Have a Weakness or Soft Spot For:

Sad ladies in Saturday leotards;
drained lakes and the ducks who still drink from them;
chocolate éclairs conquered on park benches
by lonely young men in thrift-shop dress shirts;
grassy inclines vibrant with trillium;
city children on country field trips;
foliage falling like a gaggle of gymnasts;
little orange spiders who don’t care what death is;
the sound of nothing happening all at once;
the spectacle of respectability compromised;
soft-headed creatures trusting the food-gods;
late summer afternoons and the lazy music they release;
widows and widowers who have nowhere to go;
the watery features of children without birthdays;
the knowledge anything empty almost contains;
bicycle rides on drizzly days
up and down sleepless streets;
bad haircuts on attractive people;
Chinese-restaurant workers eating
clandestine noodles on the back-stoop;
the way dogs, defying human logic,
take everything so personally and thrive;
the way cats of all stripes
offer free clinics on indifference;

and poems so delicate they die before being looked at.

*this is the first in a five-day series of poems The Opiate is publishing by Connolly Ryan