December 14: Juliet Kono, "Homeless," Benefit Poetry Reading

Homeless

by:  Juliet Kono

My son lives on the streets.

We don’t see each other much.

Like a mother who puts white lilies

on the headstone of a dead child,

I put money into his bank account,

clothes into E-Z Access storage

and pretend he’s far away—

at a boarding school, or in a foreign country.

Nights, I dream fairy tales about him.

I dream he becomes a prince,

scholar or warrior who rescues me

from sorrow, the way he rescued me

when he was a child and said,

“Mommy, don’t cry,” and brought tea

into the room of his father’s acrimony—

brave, standing tall in the forest

fire of his father’s scorn. I wake

to the empty sound of wind in the trees.

He says he wants to live with me.

I say I can’t live with him—

boy whose words crash like branches in a rain storm.

Nothing can hold him in,

the walls of a house too thin.

Back home, I had seen

the “study-hard-so-you-don’t-become-like-them”

street bums on Mamo Street,

and he’s like them.

These days, in order to catch a glimpse of him,

I circle the city. One day,

I see him on his bike.

People give him wide berth,

the same way birds avoid power lines,

oncoming cars or trees.

I park on a side street.

Wild-eyed, he flies the block

as if in a holding pattern.

Not of my body, not of my hopes,

he homes in on what can’t be given or taken away.

_______________________________

A poem for tonight in anticipation of the benefit reading I've organized for the Warming Center and Room at the Inn, places that help the homeless in my area.

No matter how difficult I think my life is, I know that I am greatly blessed.

Saint Marty knows this.