He kicked the trash bin
on the corner. Three times.
Spun around waving
his fist in the air.
Ran dirt blackened fingers
though the nest of his hair,
shouted at the panicking pigeons
in the financial district air,
-Your whores and ideas
hurt my head.
What poison is this,
polluting his mind,
imbibed at his mother’s
tit or felt with his fathers fist?
or lost in the cold sands
of a mountain village
where hell severed
his last connection
to the divine.
The indigent lady
who sits in her wheelchair
outside Starbucks
holding her cardboard sign
that implores “can you help?”
blesses me for the two dollars
I drop in her cup and smiles sadly
as the young man
careens down Battery Street
cursing sandwiches, smartphones,
and short skirts.
The corner lady inquires
how was my day?
and I say it was fine,
then I ask her
where do you stay?
Here and there, she says,
where do you,
is it nice?
Mark, your last stanza..........Where do you live? Is it nice? took me back to my days as a student nurse in the early 60's. Our class went on a field trip to Sonoma State Developmental Center. I had very little idea what to expect.and was shocked and stunned to see adults living in cribs. I felt guilty even looking at them as if I were a voyeur. I came upon a young woman with hydrocephalus.Her body was small but her head was so large it reached almost from one side of the crib to the other. She looked up at me and smiled. "Hello", I said, trying not to show my distress and desire to turn away from her deformity. "I have a boyfriend too," she said. Nothing could have touched me more. I had looked at her as different than me, as "the other." In that one proclamation to me she made it perfectly clear that we are not so different. We share the same human dreams desires, wants and needs. It was a 'defining moment' for me. I left that hospital humbled and with a greater appreciation of my connectedness to others including and especially those who have been less fortunate than me..Judy B
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