Autobiography

Without design, the future shrugged. / I hoped I might find myself over there and not / be disappointed.

A photograph of the poet, a man with his chin in his hand and looking toward the right of the frame, against a periwinkle-blue background.
The Walrus

Jobless on the half-rotten porch, pulpit

to a sunken trans-Vancouver bike path a minute’s

whir from East Hastings. Jaded, couch-

surfing castaway, I thought

youth the best refusal and the great hope.

Jeff obsessed over how a spider gets its web

across the considerable distance between rail post

and magnolia. He asked me. I said dunno and went

to the library. Without design, the future shrugged.

I hoped I might find myself over there and not

be disappointed. Identity’s alarm. Mere puzzles

I juggled as I passed the grim ranks of homeless.

And learned the strand from a spider’s spinneret dangles

on the breeze until it sticks to something solid.

David O'Meara
David O’Meara has written numerous poetry collections as well as the play Disaster.