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

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Graphite Chopsticks

We ate lunch outside in front of the coffee shop that gets a decent chunk of my income. I had tuna bibimbap . Like most rice dishes, this one is supposed to be eaten with a spoon. I was too lazy, however, to pull out chopsticks AND a spoon. A few minutes into my lunch, one of the baristas came outside, stuck a small plastic spoon in my bowl, and returned to her work.  When I arrived in my first grade class, quiet Shiyoo proudly held out her shiny, gray fingertips for me to see. She used her break wisely to color them with her pencil. Jason did the same but clearly forgot about it. He didn't make it ten minutes before his cheeks and nose were varying shades of pencil gray. 
Read more

Time Zones

Image
Fact #4 Korea's time zone is GMT+9:00. Minnesota is GMT-6:00 (Central Time).  That puts Korea 14 hours ahead of Minnesota. (borrowed from  http://www.travel.com.hk/region/timezone.htm )
Read more

Shake

On my way from the subway station to my apartment, I picked up a cookies 'n cream ice cream bar. I'd never done that before. Now that I know they cost 500 ₩  ($0.43 USD), it won't be so easy to bypass them.  I was greeted by an elderly stranger when I exited the convenience store.  "Oh good! Hi!" he waved. "Hello," I smiled and waved back. And then he turned an addressed the preschool-aged boy beside him. "악수. 악수!" he instructed, pushing him toward me. The little boy looked up at me, jaw open, and stuck out his hand for me to shake. I don't imagine he was overly impressed with me, but  his grandfather was pretty proud of him, and  I walked home with a big, cheesy grin. Also, the cookies 'n cream bar was pretty fabulous.
Read more