Pacing pausing
Numb impatience
While heat beat down
Asphalt earth below my shoes
You
Shoeless
Stood barred behind chainlink
Choosing?
They choose this
They say.
What living being chooses to
Dwell among dead brush
Bugs
Cement
Exhaust
Crusted soil
Soul filled with bleak solitude
Your neck blanketed.
Bare, bruised feet below
Fossilized fingers
Devitalized
In ways I will not pretend to know
No fortune
No fame
No feather in your cap
For your, what, 59 years?
Metal fence posts by buckled sidewalks
Stake your finishing line
For a race you most likely
Lost
Can there be comfort
In the rags
Bags
Sleeping in such bristly crags
Photo Credit: Caroline Martins at Pexels
A captured, exhausted tiger caught
In a country that turns
An uncaring shoulder
Coldly
In your direction
Neglected
Hungry
Sojourning the streets
Blistering heat
Bone-cracking cold
My quickening pace
As I approached
Pivoting my eyes
You
Clutching the links talon-like
Your fingernails like onion skins
Peeling
I glanced
I slowed
I met the iris of your eye
Dark
Unlike mine
But kaleidoscoped
like mine
Reflecting summer’s blue hue
Both knowing pain
Somewhere on the spectrum
A tiny imperceptible tightrope
One eye
Two
Another
A flash connection
Transient
Which, in a downward cast,
Conveyed
help me
Photo Credit: Lalesh Aldarwish at Pexels
Gripping the dripping plastic
Tightly
Halting
Here…
I have water…
Offered and
Gently plucked
From my palm
God Bless! Thank you
Gravelly-voiced
Parched
Appreciative
Cardboard at his ankle
Among desolate weeds and debris
Hungry Homeless Any-Thing Will Help
Will it? As I walked on
Wanting to wave a wand or
Whisk this being away
From his weary existence
I wondered
What difference does it make
At all
What difference can we make
At all
Are we so different
After all
Stranded like a starfish
Washed up
On a cement shore
Some come along
To toss carelessly back to sea
Some come along
And stare
Some come
And snark
Some
Stomp
He drinks mightily
Pauses
Resumes pacing
Wipes his brow with the
Blanket from his neck
Red white and blue
Dotted with fifty starfish
Read Keri’s blog for VestLife HERE
This eloquent poem sent shivers throughout my entire body.
I recently visited downtown L.A. and was so depressed by the living conditions of all the homeless people on the streets -sleeping in tents and tarps and cardboard boxes. Such inhumanity for people to exist in squalor without bathrooms or running water or food! Why in the richest nation on earth do we have so many people living worse than the populations of third world countries?
The poetic analogies speak loudly of our despair as we sail in an ocean of pandemic wreckage. The poem opens eyes, and awareness is the first step in solving a problem. Like starfish, we are incredibly resilient We can acquiesce and float aimlessly, or chart a course to go home again.
This was so beautifully written and powerful. My heart hurts (which means you did your job). I wish everyone was able to see the world through the compassionate eyes that you do.
Lovely poem Keri <3