I have walked among the unclean
and am marked by
your regret
that people fall from grace,
and force you to forget
kindness and civility,
not as outrageous gesture
to defy your fear of the unknowable human,
but simply,
to help to ease the way of one who is suffering.
For what else is there in the face of the passerby,
who, wrinkled nose and tempered stare,
wanders past the unclean Pale
in fear and panic
where the homeless hail
"got any spare change?"
Pennies come from worn out women
in rutted pick-up trucks and too many kids,
BMWs roll their windows up fast, "get a job"
easier said than done when your life no longer
fits the niches of their application forms.
To become the other,
to inspire fear,
where the day before
acceptable people called you friend
and never questioned
anymore
the nature of your heart.
Character reveals itself in hardship not wallets
I know many esteemed men who would snatch an
old lady's purse in a heartbeat, given two weeks
on the street with no hope. Gives new meaning to
the word "bum"; those who fed me when the women's
auxiliary did not roll out the welcome wagon covered dish.
To touch the face of fear
and loss is a gift
we harvest within
to see the unclean in holy light
leads us to begin
to forgive those who have and those who have not.