When You're Down and Out

The other day
(in a typical American city
caught in a typical daydream)
I got into a taxi-cab
and started to tell the aging driver
a humorous tale
about a hobo I'd helped with a few dollars
a few hours ago

He didn't even have ears to listen:
he told me
(with blue eyes pinched and
his voice high-pitched but rough)
that "they're all a bunch of drug addicts"
and "they get all kinds of free stuff."
"They don't want to get up
and go to work in the morning."

I quickly lost my social appetite-
didn't finish my story
and didn't try to set him right:
what was it after all to me?
It just struck me as sadly funny
how he in his yellow-cab dignity
was only a few unlucky strokes,
from begging in the coming snows

And we're all,
after all,
tied and united in bonds
and connections we can't always
even imagine are there at all:
but we exist primarily as citizens
of many loosely, sometimes
even mystically tied communities

The cabbie was entirely wrong;
in my country,
there's no real safety net
and one needn't be a junkie
to fall into the dirty throng

I've never had to sleep
in a crowded, un-safe mission
nor beg strangers for change
under the insane August sun,
but I've known those who HAVE
from vice and plain mis-fortune;
But believe me I've been down and out
and all that kept me from it
was a lucky run or an epiphany

And such times were admittedly tough
but invaluable lessons in philosophy...
for it's unbelievable how old friends
who in better times you didn't make time to see
welcome you in,
(ignoring the grime on your jeans)
freely share their daily bread
and point you in new directions

It's remarkable how
when you've only a dollar
for a morning cup of coffee
how (no matter the culture or continent)
many a waitress
will see your hunger and !!un-asked!!
give you pieces of bread with butter
and re-fill your coffee cup
with a friendly, crimminal wink

It's amazing how
when in mad pursuit of the bardic art,
I find myself asking for radical help
and, as if feeling a call beyond money and greed,
acquaintances and strangers rally to my need

And, though truly lucky,
I'm not in this way somehow unique;
For even NOW when we are taught
that money and power
are all we ought to seek,
and no one has a right
to anything at all they haven't bought,
!!nonetheless!!, humanity and charity
shine forth with Herculean might

No, I don't see this world
through unrealistic rose-colored lenses;
Much bloody oppression happens
under this or that idealistic flag un-furled

I'm no sage on a puffy cloud floating about
(I know neither the mechanism nor the route)
but I've seen it oft enough
that I say without any doubt:

It's amazing who knows you
when you're down and out