![\"Homeless\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/162\/2015\/11\/Homeless.jpg\")
<\/a>My daily bike-ride near downtown Tucson is not picturesque. It\u2019s along a bike trail that\u2019s squeezed between a highway and a tattered string of small factories and beaten down neighborhoods.<\/p>\nThe bike trail is usually fairly abandoned when I ride it. Occasionally I\u2019ll pass another biker or someone walking.<\/p>\n
But I can always count on passing the man who lives under the overpass that\u2019s an exit ramp from the highway.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s dark under that overpass. And he is dark: African American, wearing a dark-colored dirty jacket. He\u2019s usually sitting in the least visible place possible: on the concrete, leaning against a post, his back to the bike trail. Sometimes he\u2019s talking to himself, but usually he\u2019s silent\u2026just sitting or lying down. Near him is a shopping cart stuffed with what I assume are all his possessions. I can see a dusty gray wool blanket at the top; nothing else is clearly visible as I bike by.<\/p>\n
He doesn\u2019t seem dangerous, to himself or others. He is hiding\u2026from others and from himself? Where does he get food, I always wonder. And what damage has been done to his psyche that he has chosen this life of self-imposed solitary confinement?<\/p>\n
He seems so locked in with his solitude that I don\u2019t dare stop to offer help; my guess is that this would frighten him.<\/p>\n
But my husband and I have been concerned about him. Is there any agency looking after him? So my husband went to the folks at our neighborhood association, which the police use as an informal sub-station. Yes, they knew of him. One of the policemen said, \u201cIt\u2019s because of the cutbacks to services; people that should be in institutionalized care are left to themselves.\u201d \u201cHe\u2019s crazy,\u201d said another, but with compassion in his voice. \u201cWe\u2019ll check in on him,\u201d another said.<\/p>\n
I shake my head in dismay. What kind of society have we created that people so hurt are not cared for? Are left on the sidewalk like the trash that has heaped to overflowing in the trashcan next to this man\u2019s \u201chome\u201d?<\/p>\n
But another part of me senses, whenever my bike approaches his home, that I\u2019m passing through sacred ground. \u201cYou live here, Lord,\u201d I\u2019ve come to say to myself. And I always pray as I bike past him: \u201cLord, let him know that you are alive in him, in whatever way that he can recognize you.\u201d<\/p>\n
But I feel inarticulate in the face of the mystery of this man\u2019s life. And when I feel inarticulate, I turn to poetry.<\/p>\n
Eileen Myles expresses an appropriate sense of outrage in these lines from her \u201cAn American Poem\u201d:<\/p>\n
The homeless are wandering I share these sentiments, but to my ear these lines belong more in a political protest speech than in a poem. Poetry, I feel, should be more nuanced, should have at least some element of reflectiveness. So I find the following poem by Ruth Stone speaking more profoundly of my relation to the man who lives under the overpass. The poem is called \u201cShapes.\u201d<\/p>\n In the longer view it doesn\u2019t matter. I like this poem\u2019s images for that \u201cviolent compression of meaning \/ in an instant within the meaningless.\u201d<\/p>\n Yet maybe the poetry that most powerfully articulates what I imagine as the cry of the man under the overpass himself is biblical. Living like a slave who longs for the shadow\u2014as someone who truly lives in the shadow\u2014this man might utter Job\u2019s plaint in 7:1-6:<\/p>\n Do not human beings have a hard service on earth, While for\u00a0me<\/em>\u00a0it does help to hear what I imagine as this man\u2019s spirit articulated in Job\u2019s magnificent poetry, I don\u2019t see, alas, how it can help\u00a0him<\/em>. All I see is his days \u201ccoming to their end without hope.\u201d<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Originally published in<\/em>\u00a0Good Letters\u00a0on May 4, 2012.<\/em><\/p>\n Peggy Rosenthal<\/a>\u00a0is director of\u00a0Poetry Retreats<\/a>\u00a0and writes widely on poetry as a spiritual resource. Her books include\u00a0Praying through Poetry: Hope for Violent Times <\/em>(Franciscan Media), and\u00a0The Poets\u2019 Jesus\u00a0<\/em>(Oxford). See Amazon<\/a>\u00a0for a full list. She also teaches an online\u00a0course, \u201cPoetry as a Spiritual Practice,\u201d<\/a> through\u00a0Image<\/em>\u2019s Glen Online program<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n
\n<\/em>the streets of our nation\u2019s
\n<\/em>greatest city. Homeless
\n<\/em>men with AIDS are among
\n<\/em>them. Is that right?
\n<\/em>That there are no homes
\n<\/em>for the homeless, that
\n<\/em>there is no free medical
\n<\/em>help for these men. And women.
\n<\/em>That they get the message
\n<\/em>\u2014as they are dying\u2014
\n<\/em>that this is not their home?<\/em><\/p>\n
\n<\/em>However, it\u2019s that having lived, it matters.
\n<\/em>So that every death breaks you apart.
\n<\/em>You find yourself weeping at the door
\n<\/em>of your own kitchen, overwhelmed
\n<\/em>by loss. And you find yourself weeping
\n<\/em>as you pass the homeless person
\n<\/em>head in hands resigned on a cement
\n<\/em>step, the wire basket on wheels right there.
\n<\/em>Like stopped film, or a line of Vallejo,
\n<\/em>or a sketch of the mechanics of a wing
\n<\/em>by Leonardo. All pauses in space,
\n<\/em>a violent compression of meaning
\n<\/em>in an instant within the meaningless.
\n<\/em>Even staring into the dim shapes
\n<\/em>at the farthest edge; accepting that blur.<\/em><\/p>\n
\n<\/em>and are not their days like the days of a laborer?
\n<\/em>Like a slave who longs for the shadow,
\n<\/em>and like laborers who look for their wages,
\n<\/em>so I am allotted months of emptiness,
\n<\/em>and nights of misery are apportioned to me.
\n<\/em>When I lie down I say, \u2018When shall I rise?\u2019
\n<\/em>But the night is long,
\n<\/em>and I am full of tossing until dawn.
\n<\/em>My flesh is clothed with worms and dirt;
\n<\/em>my skin hardens, then breaks out again.
\n<\/em>My days are swifter than a weaver\u2019s shuttle,
\n<\/em>and come to their end without hope.<\/em><\/p>\n