Homeless Reflections Detroit, Michigan Written January 8th 2009 on the flight from Detroit to Denver.

It was a cold, grey day in downtown Detroit. We sat in the Pontiac sedan, surrounded by brown paper sacks full of sandwiches and snacks. We searched for the less fortunate living on the frozen concrete. Block after block...no luck. And there she was. I asked her if she was hungry and approached her with a sack lunch. Her watery eyes squinted and her forehead squeezed as she pleaded for a ride to the local church shelter. Her voice, roughened by age and shrill with desperation, cut through this heart. I helped her to the sedan's front seat. She lowered her cane into the car's cockpit and kneeled to sit. Her right shoe disengaged from her leg. Stopped, everything stopped. My eyes were...stopped. I thought: Incomplete. Where is it? The foot... She cried out as if she had lied to me and had to confess. She cried out in that edgy, trebly voice. She cried out, My foot was amputated! Then, in such a pitiful pitch, she begged me to place her shoe back where her foot ought to have been. It slipped into place. I looked into her old yet soft eyes and shut the door. The car's own feet slipped slightly on the cold asphalt as it turned toward her refuge. I was alone, myself, upon the concrete tundra. The grey sky loomed overhead, battered buildings stood as testaments to poverty. A cold wind blew. My face clenched. Empathy overtook apathy. This heart dropped from my chest. The ground rippled and waves formed, spreading to every curve of the earth. This intellect struggles to cope, struggles to cover ugly expressions that manifest physically when the heart is swallowed by the black mist that is experiential knowledge of oppression and despair. This soul hopes that other hearts will be swallowed by that black mist, fall from individual chests as if a ripe apple from a tree, and form a unified, universal wave that will drown the cold existence of evil. I experienced darkness in Detroit. I saw darkness in Gaza. Without darkness there is no light. My soul is thirsty for light. Your soul is thirsty for light. Our soul is thirsty for light. Let's drink.