THE GUTTERSNIPE

As mother and I walked down the street
going to her friend Jen's house for tea,
I noticed a tiny girl of five or six
inside a trash can, rusted and filthy.

Don't look, don’t stare-my mother gasped,
as I watched this girl eat bits of food
mixed in with shavings of rust
at the bottom of the empty trash can.

I felt such pity, but how to help her.? I thought:
"How bad had she been to be there?"
When my mother snapped, "Come along now!"
I silently screamed, "Doesn't anyone care?"

Slicing my heart with her razor sharp tongue,
"You know that could be, would be YOU!
If we didn't take you from your Mother
You would be right there in that gutter!"

Once more she hit my head and yanked my arm
dragging me to "tea", then venemously hissed,
"If that child had obeyed her mother,
she never would be eating from that gutter!"

I choked my swallowed cries for that little girl,
the one who would be, should be me.
Through this small scene I saw at once
my past and future in one glance...

A happy little guttersnipe with my REAL mother
scrounging trash--perhaps, or not, but we
certainly would have been little guttersnipes
with love together, always and forever!