This summer, I was walking down the street and I saw a homeless man leaning against a granite wall in downtown Minneapolis. The man had his knees hunched to his chest and a pad of paper balancing across them. I remember how striking the image was–the smooth granite, with its metallic flecks of gray and quartz contrasted against the duller gray of the homeless man, whose shadowy body seemed to meld into the mineral planes of granite. Two shades of black–a granite block on a modern building with chrome fixtures and elegant windows against the muted shades of poverty and street life–gave off the same coldness.

This man looked like he had a story to tell, his eyes were small and hard like obsidian, his face deeply etched with grimy lines, and his lean fingers were tightly grasping his pen.

He had a plastic bucket propped in front of him, and a sign leaning against it that read “A Penny a Poem”. I dropped some money in the bucket and the man picked a random poem for me.

The poem was handwritten on a small piece of paper, and touched me because it spoke volumes about what I felt being homeless–and what few see about homeless people. That our worlds are more than free meals or begging or desperation…we don’t cling to the material world in the same way most do, because we have learned to let go of so much. I saw a glimpse of this man’s thoughts, his dreams, his sarcastic commentary on the busy feet shuffling all around him…I saw more. And that is what touched me. Because I was once homeless, and despite my desperate circumstance, my world was also so much more. But few ever saw, let alone understood.

Lynn Mari, 2009
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My Last Day: Poem from a Homeless Man

“My last day
Started out fine

The theatre

A sharp sudden blow
Took what was mine

A life

To encourage the peace
Of the world

At least
The troops on the field
Did not fail.”

– Anonymous, 2008.