People Watching

Not young enough - or old enough - 
for crawling on all fours
Pausing to puff his cigarette
which keep falling to the floor
Far too hot for sleeves
yet he wore a sweater
Tattered pants, dirty shoes,
hands and feet no better
Never seen a slower crawl
finally staggered to our spot
Pathetic looks and pleas to no avail
others shunned and shooed him on
One fellow had a change of heart
pursued the forsaken man
Called Emergency as he collapsed
clasping ragged shoes in hand
A feeble attempt to depart
with Samaritan still standing guard
a heartless drunk took a rod
struck his head, knocked him forward
Maybe he lost all strength
maybe he tried to crawl
Plunged head first down the steps
and vanished before us all
Police showed first, then ambulance
violent citizen got off free
Resolution I will never know
memories will never leave me
Though I never hurt the beggar
like the beast who cracked his head
I fear that doing nothing 
made me also guilty in the end
"Should I have" and "What if"
chase each other 'round my brain
Maybe nothing would have changed.
Maybe nothing would be the same.

Comments

  1. GraceAugust 9, 2010 at 12:20 AM

    did you write this?

    ReplyDelete
  2. AmyAugust 9, 2010 at 11:31 AM

    Wow, that's really deep Liz...thanks for writing that. It was a night I'll probably never forget either. Sometimes in the States I'm afraid to stand up for others, yet in Korea feel I would but can't because of language. Maybe sometimes language doesn't matter though...Anyways, you took a lot of thought to write that.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Mark ZAugust 12, 2010 at 3:09 AM

    Really powerful, Elizabeth. Wow.

    ReplyDelete

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