The Cry Of One

Eyes languishing in life’s alleys

never seek the aid from angels or knights

in far off clouds and castles

as the immediate cure to the pain of hunger.

They look at the ones who stand before them

with their silent, passive glances

and let their need speak its suffering,

for that is the visible face who has hands

able to end the malaise in misery,

take that wounded soul

out of the shadows where the heart

wears the thorny raiment of despair.

 

It isn’t in lofty ideals about love or charity

that true help will ever express its deeds,

instead it is in the hand seen,

the one who appears where the tragedy travails,

which becomes either the living extension of the Lord

or another spirit of indifference

who fades into the darkness

never hearing the cry of one.

 

When impoverish spirits lie naked of hope

upon that cold and bitter cruel concrete,

there is no need for strangers amid their plight,

but a neighbor who truly sees in that agony

an image of self in another winter

then bends down in compassion

while doing what one can

to help bind the wounds.