Eyes Clenched Open
He sits with a cup, grasped tight in his hands
Pennies rattling softly with tin
And against the winter air
He stares, warmth missing from within.
With wrinkled skin and wispy, white hair
He sits so pensively
Upon this sidewalk, Boston bench
And towards him I walk, with head bent low,
And arms so close to me.
Before the man, so many pass,
Not sparing him a glimpse
As if their lives, so important now, can’t see what’s happened since—
Since skyscrapers stretched on and on—
Metal clashing high, with bright blue sky,
And on the ground, far below, these vagrants who come and go
Were left to watch the dollars fly
As they lay, cold, on unforgiving benches,
Kept alert from the stale, judgmental stares of those who prospered,
Those who strived above and off these sidewalks,
And up, up into the still brighter blue wide skies.
He who succeeded
And left these people out,
Out of service, out of luck—
So simply down and out
They mill about, here on the ground
And if they happen to look up—
I can’t help but think,
Of a certain emptiness, that sounds from that tin cup
And so they pass, leaving him be
All that he can be..
Perhaps they think he’s an addict of sorts-
Which leaves him only me…
And yet—
I stop.
Shoulders stiffening, and eyes glazed,
the image of so many men
Whose guise was just as his, comes rushing to my mind
And all I can picture is this man, whose now beside me
Spending my money on booze.
So hands clenched, I continue on
And mourn the loss of man,
Where so many before have looked and passed,
Denying so much to a simple outstretched hand
For who are we to look and scoff, and someone so completely put off
By life, and its burdens?
A fist closed around a dollar, is a closed hand indeed
And no matter the motive, I shiver to think
That this stingy, and cold world, now includes me.
