Streets

Parallel

Elderly Vietnamese woman


dips gloved hands into
 street recycle bins.


She fishes aluminum
 cans.

Stomps each flat.


Places her catch
 in cloth sacks

hung from
 a bamboo length.


Slinging pole over shoulder,


she vanishes down street.


In her old country,
 

she fetched water for survival


with the same skill.

The Arrival

At my bus stop, 
a homeless derelict


lounges across the shelter bench
,

draped with coarse blanket


protection from morning's cold and rain.


Drenched,
 I stand in drizzle


rather than intrude


on his makeshift bedroom.

A put-upon courtesy, 


I mutter silently and grouse.


The rain washes
 my irritation.


The bus will come.

I will go with others


to warmth and comfort.

The Plagues

We ascend the hill in darkness


through frigid morning drizzle


past the shadowed, sullen


gauntlet of locust people


mired in the mud below.


Lice-plagued men and women


asleep in their stench,


unsheltered and oblivious


to the smell of stale urine


rising from the steps.


Heads lowered,


we avoid their blemished, cattle-boiled faces,


as we leapfrog puddled pavement


to the sanctuary of our comfort cubes.


The day passes uneventfully

and
 as the primal light recedes,


we descend to the streets below


cross the flooded septic Styx.


We traverse these same unwashed and fallow


whose lives are spent in traded blood


drinking the death of discards.

Theirs, the endless hunger
 of tormented souls,


salved only by begged bread-scraps,


time and death.


We pass without notice


or compassion.