BLUE SHADOWS OVER US

Hilary Clinton asked people to propose a campaign song. I am too late in submitting this (You may imagine your own blues music to accompany the words):

Blue shadows over me. Blue shadows over me.
I used to be poor and lost in shadows.
I made my way through dangerous alleys, ominous meadows.
I found the true body I am to occupy, and a sound mind,
when I found a colony of the thinking and the kind.
Living in a place that despises me,
I cursed their chains, and set myself free –
but how can I feel that way when I see the same old poverty
around me, such a vast, sad global sea. Who could feel free?
And yet I cannot weep. We turn to shell, empty and brittle.
We turn to stone in a world turning to stone, little by little.
Blue shadows over me. Blue shadows over us.

I talked to a homeless man, and I asked him his name. He said, “I like to be called Anonymous.”

Homeless

As the drivers shift gears, their stuttering trucks
are metallic curtains that slide awkwardly away,
unveiling, across the street, the motionless poor,
huddled together in weathered clothes. My heart shakes
with a caged howl, and turns inward. The howl drops
a well down through me; I follow it toward the bottomless,
where I hope I will drop out into numb ignorance.
But the cold, grey poor sit on my eyeballs all the way down,
and when I look up, they have not been erased by the passing
traffic. As I wait at the bus stop, the homeless awaken;
neatly pack their gear away on neatly ordered grocery carts;
they speak quietly, assist each other in early morning rituals.

-- James McColley Eilers, copyright 2007