Poetry
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Eight years on the streets.
No one could find you. Worse, though, you couldn’t find yourself. A mind too worn out to flee insanity you sat hidden in bushes or aimlessly trudged concrete paths leading nowhere. One day you lashed out in a paranoid rage and They grabbed you and jailed you. But there was good in that. Soon there was soothing talk and medications that made connections in your brain so the sun was the sun and the moon was the moon—again. Then twenty years of everything right— housing, a career, laughter, comfort, good times. Why, oh, why did you pick a day to disappear again? You had everything but chose to return to nothing. All alone—cold and confused. Again. But do you understand how friendship works? Now we are cold and confused, too, because we thought we knew you— but we were wrong. |
What It Really Is About
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I couldn’t take it anymore.
Walking by sad, homeless people, barely looking at them as I passed them by. I wanted to be better than that so I decided on a simple outreach plan: I would give them granola bars. Using my instincts, I chose the people to approach. I thought that my gift to them was the granola bar, but right away I learned the truth: It’s not about the granola bar. No matter how hungry a person was, what mattered more than the bar was my looking into their eyes and that I wasn’t telling them to be someone more, to go somewhere else. I was smiling and gentle and, in return, no matter how deep their agony, no matter how far back they had to travel to me from their psychotic wanderings, they were there for me with friendly eyes and polite “pleases” and “thank yous” and “your compassion means a lot.” One man clung to the granola bar as though it were a gift from heaven in a life where he owns nothing—but despair. Yet even so… It’s not about the granola bar. Our real connection became clear when tears swelled up in his eyes because, although he had asked nothing of me, I came to him when he had long forgotten what it was like for someone to see him. Giving of ourselves may seem like a little thing but it isn’t, in fact, a little thing but a big forever thing that can change how a person feels about the world and, very importantly, how he feels about his own worth. Those simple gestures are selfish in a way because each time I left in awe of how kindness survives inside worn-out, ignored people. Kindness waiting for a reason to glow. It’s not about the granola bar. It’s about talking with a person and not at a person. It’s about giving him a moment of not being judged. It’s about letting his humanity shine through to light his smile that brightens both our worlds. |
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About Vivian Imperiale
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The Vistas & Byways Review is the semiannual journal of fiction, nonfiction, poetry and visual arts by members of OLLI at SF State. Vertical Divider
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The Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at San Francisco State University provides material support to the Vistas & Byways volunteer staff. |
