Dancing Dresses

See the old mothers and fathers
questing for a crust of bread,
for a bit of human kindness
that rarely comes their way.

There but for the Grace of God
go you and I - just a thread
between survival and the streets...
and thread frays and breaks

My home was once
beneath a broken log in a
park where once I had jogged
in days before he stomped
his reality into me.

Someone had taken my coat
It was February in an ice storm
I had guiltily snagged a
small suitcase from a Goodwill
donation station

It was filled with cocktail dresses
from the fifties...

I was not a “street person”
but a PTA president and
innocent of the drugs this
husband of mine desired
more than his wife

So when you see the folks
who sleep rough and sometimes
ask for coins - remember,
it could have been me,
who did no drugs
and whose only crime
was loving innocently