In search of shelter

The rain persists. Remorseless winter's
downpour, it saturates not just your clothes
but seeps into your veins and soaks
old bones made cold and brittle, colder
now the work of ages and infirmity is done
so that the past, wrapped round the frame
a young man once defied his odds with,
reveals itself in aching joints, thin blood
so poorly circulating time forgot to count
and scars and scrapes just one mishap away
from festering sore and misery, infected
by the grime, the dirt, the bugs, the vile
contentions and assaults of being a bum;
a man who sleeps in doorways if he can,
who knows no more than where to hide
on rainy winter nights this world forgets.

I've been reading more of 1984 with its cold, dank Victory Mansions.  It's raining outside our window here in Sydney.  And it's cold.  As I pushed from my office block entrance to the corner of Campbell Street where my taxi waited I passed a woman, bare-footed, sitting on newspapers on the dry forecourt.  She was settling down for the night.  I've never seen here there before.  In search of something to put in my blog before heading off to my warm bed, maybe these disparate elements came together in something that may or may not be a poem.  Whatever it is, it is what it is.
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