Eyes of a Scavenger

about a memory

His eyes were a murky, dirty yellow.
I mean really, who has eyes like that?
He was rummaging in the trash, odd fellow.
Into his cart he stuffed a broken ball bat.

He placed on his head Jim's ripped Tigers' hat,
then wandering off when I tapped on a window pane.
Three times he returned, like a wandering rat,
hunched over, poking through rubbish in the rain.

Always his eerie eyes lit with a light, insane,
as he looked and peered, poked and stole,
a broken lamp or something equally mundane.
"He should be chased off by a neighborhood patrol."

He was just a blight on the outskirts of my existence,
like a seagull or raccoon in shadow beyond life's glow.
I never stopped to see what brought this circumstance.
It's a shame to judge hastily and never really know.