Part I

Old man John's apparently moving to Yarmouth. And it's been three years since George passed. The leaves still survive molding with the wind. They were brittle beds, but they are soft now when the rains fall and the snows cover like a collection of the seasons.

I have grown up with this blessed-life perception of the world, but it's nothing like the books say it is. School teachers never taught us about people like old man John. Miss Evans never told me I would find a homeless person in Plymouth. She never told me I would find beggars outside the Vatican. And she never told me I'd cry for them.

Because when the skies fade and day is stuck in the doldrums of dusk, I think about old man John. I remember how George used to come into the shop and read the newspaper upside down; he was practically blind. How he'd more than often smell and how I'd remain silent when I knew Mark had to kick him out. I felt bad for the man, but that's all I ever did - simply hold a single emotion.

Elie Wiesel once said, "Indifference elicits no response. Indifference is not a response. Indifference is not a beginning; it is an end." In my emotional state, I am indifferent. I dwell on the fact that I have a coffee in hand and a car to drive me home at night. And then I just think about my home - how I actually have a home.

I have a home.

For the past year, old man John's home was the bench in front of the Unitarian church. I always found him out there. Sitting on that bench. Elbows locked and fists clenched to the seat like it was an arm wrestling competition. And he was never losing, but I don't think he was winning either.

I mean, he wore an oxygen tank like cancer never actually left him. And that old navy hat - if a hat is what you can actually call it because it fell more like an Americanized turban or scrap of cloth folded at specific seams unraveling and fading and all-together falling apart on his matted scalp - gave him that typical homeless man look.

But I can't believe there's anything typical regarding homelessness.

So in a land where all days are not fair,

Fair days went on till on another day

A thousand golden sheaves were lying there,

Shining and still, but not for long to stay

-E.A. Robinson