Not the Manneken Pis

by Peter Huggins

 

Not the naughty boy caught filling
The fountain in Brussels. An aging man

Dressed in blue denim and brown corduroy,
Wandering lower Magazine Street,

One of our homeless. He could be me,
He could be you. He stops,

Unzips his pants, and relieves himself.
He has nowhere else to go. He must

Use this street and why not? It is his.
As nothing else is. What I love

Is his insistence on his dignity:
In a man so exposed to the world

He covers himself with his hand
Though he must piss in the street.

©2005 Peter Huggins

Peter Huggins teaches in the English Department at Auburn University. His books of poems are Necessary Acts, River City Publishing, 2004, Blue Angels, River City Publishing, 2001, and Hard Facts, Livingston Press, 1998. A novel for middle readers, In the Company of Owls, is forthcoming from NewSouth Books, and a picture book, Trosclair and the Alligator, is due out in October 2005 from Star Bright Books/New York.