swanston st drifter

This week's writing exercise was to go out with a classmate into a nearby fast food restaurant and pick someone to observe. We had about 20 minutes to write a "double tanka", an expanded version of a haiku (that's 5-7-5-7-7/5-7-5-7-7/-5 syllables per line). Here's what we came up with

In and out of doors,
drifting like a bird of prey.
Like a ghost he haunts,
muttering on silent lips.
His stare stretches a mile long,
his shirt a loose shroud.
An invisible burden,
his arms mid-cross,
not committed to the fold.
It's the season everything
wants to be inside.

Earlier that week I watched some metro workers replacing some of the rail lines. They do it at 3am when the trains aren't running.

Lit up by flood lights
working in the ink of night
tearing up the tracks
the cool hiss of hydraulic
yellow spiders march along