Homeless 1

A bleak shaggy dog yawning looks ready to collapse, an abandoned cat yawning looks ready to pounce. It's the same for the humans on this street - collapse or rant. Fourteen are scattered alone or in small groups in front of the Dorothy Day Center. They're all talking, even the solitary ones, especially the solitary ones, who have no reason to be silent. They have no other to fill the terrible emptiness, words occupy what should be peopled. (Have you ever looked straight up, your neck cranked all the way back, into the night sky and searched among the stars? Have you stared at those points of light, as if by staring you could bring them closer? And then bowed your head, and eased your neck, and all the while the same questions are being broadcast. You know the ones, everybody does.) The doors open suddenly, the crowd is now nineteen, and they shuffle in between two guards. Two drunks are barred. One is smoking a cigarette, the other looks into the night sky. They are very polite. One of the guards lingers outside, listening from the the steps. What is that persistent moan? Is it the moan of hunger, or the moan of prayer, or it is the moaning of time running out? Whatever it is, it's all that's left of humanity on the streets: the drunks are gone, the guard has locked the door. Cold concrete, even colder air in piercing wind gusts, prevailing silence, with an occasional shout from someone who's giving up, after one last long look into the night sky.