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Each dawn that orange Bird of Hope
Emerges, sings
her florid song,
And flits with beating wing to find
Her
many-feathered flock---
The hopeless and the homeless,
The
deep-despondent and bereaved,
The desperately poor and unemployed,
The
suicidal deep afflicted with their pains,
And those abandoned,
Shut-ins who don’t venture much,
The crippled prostitute
With
drugs as crutch,
And all the gaunt-eyed destitute
Who sit on icy
sidewalks begging
With their crinkled cups of Styrofoam,
Without a
recent bath, or shave, or comb.
Unseen by me, the bird hops up on wheelchairs,
Greeting stubbly veterans of that long-gone war,
And on the bedstead
of the sacrificial widow
Who had gladly served her man with meals galore
And now is vegetating utterly alone.
The bird imparts raw strength to patients in their agony,
And prisoners in torture, whether ours or theirs.
Encouraging the
death-row losers,
She has ushered crazies from their suicidal ledge
and
self-destructive cares.
My status is beyond salvation, you may say.
The bird
will counter, yes, it may,
But never yet encountered, beak-to-face,
An
absolutely hopeless case.
©2006 by Paul Hertelendy. The illustration is from IMSI'S Master Clips Collection, 1895 Francisco Blvd. E., San Rafael, CA, 94901-5506, USA. This column first posted April 22, 2006.
Poet Paul Hertelendy
is also a critic with the San Francisco Bay Area arts website www.artssf.com. To visit his website, click
here: PAUL
You can comment on this column online. Please address
your message to either "The Editors" or Paul Hertelendy. To send an email,
click here and don't forget to mention Paul's name: mailto:Syndpack@aol.com
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