Witness and Appreciation

We all open our eyes after a respite sleep and when it’s done we all place our feet down on the ground and start our lumbering of another day.
I look into the faces that pass me by, all stare blankly into the light before them, struggling to find an easier way.

Sometimes when they drive by in that wheeled shelter providing them with a momentary escape from where they were just before.
I see in their eyes a cold isolation, a sense of life’s raw disarray, coming or going, a sense of longing no one can ignore.

We’re all born with this sense of elation to life’s embrace as we then saunter about through years, seemingly, with justification.
We act upon the choices presented us, day to day, as life’s vicissitudes bring us it’s joys and it’s daunting mortifications.

With all the ‘goodness’ life affords us in the sights and sounds, the tastes and the smells, the grandeur and beauty that surrounds,
We must give pause with wanton choice to share with those without the sight our eyes behold of pleasures who to us, life abounds.

I read, today, about two children who reside in a scorching sun and town baron of paved streets and arboreal display, no sounds of life on trees or the scampering of quad pedal friends, bombs and bullets have taken their place.
An arid dirt road runs between where their windows face each other and their little faces sneak a peek through closed curtains looking at each other. They’re not allowed to talk, let alone play, because they’re told the other worships a God that offends.

I saw, today, a moving picture of a little child who’s tiny hand grasps even a tinier one held within, barefooted they take their daily stroll toward their grocery store shared with wild dogs and flies that swarm and hover over their garbage mound of choice.

If I were but a tree my limbs would sprawl out reaching out
to touch the sunrays and only feel the rain drops fall upon me
from the clouds, then maybe, as a tree, I wouldn’t care of
the answers to the ‘why’ of life or shed the tears
that have made my facial cheeks raw and dry
and I would just satiate my thirst and display to nature my
verdant-crimson sachet dress against its azure canvas sky.