Liberation

As though seeking a higher knowledge

That will liberate her,

With a wailing child on her hips,

She wanders with one arm outstretched,

Only waiting to catch the next nickel

That may be flung at her wretchedness.

Just twenty-four thousand more like her child

Will turn quiet again tomorrow,

Their hunger, their wails, their emaciation,

Unseen, unheard, unsung.

And tomorrow, even more men

Fat, wealthy, and insentient,

Will be liberated into eternal silence,

Unseen, unheard, unsung.

Did someone swear that money cannot liberate?

Insane?

She talks to the trees, calls to the birds,

Gathers the trampled fruit from the sidewalk,

And throws it into a crumpled plastic bag.

She pauses, smiles and breaks into a song,

And waits for others to pass by,

As she hauls mindfully her cart piled with clothes and cans,

While he rushes past children and bystanders,

Looking straight ahead, oblivious of his surroundings,

Yet watchful of his white clothes and polished shoes,

He shrieks an expletive as he steps on a fallen fig

And squirms hurriedly through the crowd,

Runs down the platform, and grabs

The door of a stuffed moving train.

He is the normal one and I am told she is insane.

And what else did they tell me that was true?

The Cycle

He would definitely be there.

The email said so.

It even said that the train station

Was near where he worked.

Now, almost everyone was gone, and

I was tired of gazing down the corridor,

Hoping for a glimpse of someone familiar,

And three full hours had passed.

The smart phone only led me to his voicemail

Did he forget?

Or was this some rude joke?

I pushed the metal buttons on the ticket machine, and

“One-way ticket to San Jose”, it said,

And the coins clanked in conclusion

Of this lesson of disappointment.

As the train whistled out of the station

I started to wonder.

Did I just leave someone behind?

At the Beach

The children squeal in untaught naked excitement,
As the waves crash to a white spray,
And a sharp-eyed pelican plummets into the water
Emerging with a beak full of unwary herring
And farther on the heaving sea,
A lone dolphin reveals itself
In breathtaking black loops,
And birds flap and float in conference
About greasy slime, pesticides and radioactive fish,
While I lay stretched on the peppered sand
Repeatedly running the grains between my fingers,
As if through some universal hourglass,
Admiring the work of the restless sea,
And wondering about the deafening silence.