Poem by D. Walsh Gilbert

Homeless

Near the train tracks,
at the Cañon City intersection,
13 th Street and Royal Gorge Boulevard--
a woman holds up her sign
sketched on a pizza box with a permanent
chisel-tip Sharpie:
            Once
            I was
            a foster
            child

Once, as in Once Upon a Time,
how every fairytale begins.
Here’s the story
where the unwanted princess
with tumbling red hair escapes
the stone and mortared dungeon
and runs
from the ivy-covered castle,
but loses
the secret key that opens
the golden room of mirrors.

I was, as in past tense,
not what’s happening this minute,
as in not anymore.
Such a good line break
for her six-word
narrative poem, if only
that was
what she was
writing.
The perfect enjambment of it.

a foster—what its linguistic root
requests: from fostra,
Old English, food, fodder, forage
—what she’s learned well--
as in a perforated bag of apples
and Safeway donut carton at her feet
between the itchy bindweed
and the noxious thistle.

child, as in a baby,
as in daughter
atoning the sins of her mother and father
in this concrete wilderness,
another holding place of survival,
a woman-child
who possesses lightning in her eyes,
thunder on her tongue,
who paces the curve
of the railroad tracks, ticketless.

THEME: Childhood Hunger

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​D. Walsh Gilbert is dual citizen of the Republic of Ireland and the United States and lives in Connecticut on a former sheep farm at the foot of Talcott Mountain, the prior lands of the Tunxis peoples to whom she gives deep gratitude and promises good stewardship. Her forthcoming book, SNARL (Kelsay Books), will be released summer, 2026. Alumna of Wesleyan University, class of 1979, she leads a poetry workshop for members of Connecticut Poetry Society as well as a creative writing program for residents of Masonicare at Middlewoods of Farmington. She has recently joined the board of the Sancho Panza Literary Society.

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