Past the strips of blank offices
Glass-fronted one-story buildings
Openly inwardly turned
And lacking most signs of life
The 7-11s, oasises
Two of them in three-block stretch
Battered security watching
To make sure that nobody steals them
And once at Winchester Hospital
A single cry marked the night
A crayon on wet glass has no impact
The cry marked only by metaphor
Far too lonely for seedy
Too quiet for tacky, too absent
Sits on the edges of character
Possesses not much of its own
The man in the trenchcoat's not menacing
Neither is Winchester Avenue
And little emotion in either of them
Walking down Winchester Avenue
-- Bryant Durrell
April 1994