Street Poem

This is my first post on this blog.

One of the things I do is work with a homeless charity called New Hope here in Watford.
Sometimes, I reflect on the issues, personal as well as social and political.
Here is a poem that reflects on those personal issues.

Battered and defeated people,
Walk the streets with sullen eyes.
See the cracked and heaving pavestones,
Dimmed before the brighter skies.

Lost and lonely, empty people,
Once they had a life like mine.
But outrageous fortune stripped it.
Now to backstreet ways incline.

Pavements hold the dog-end harvests.
Sometimes treasures left behind.
Even tasty scraps of chicken,
Brown sauce on a bacon rind.

This no life for human people -
Hardly human feeling so.
Margined they from eyes averted;
Invisible they quiet go. 

It's not my world, that they're seeing.
Sideways slipped to parallel
Space and time of lifeless concrete.
Stuck in their own private hell.

They don't see me, just a pocket,
Source of some much needed cash.
Don't expect of me a greeting.
Some will dash by, some will bash.

Do I see them sitting, ragged?
See the form but not the man?
True, I do not sense the person,
Firm avoiding if I can.

Seeing past each other only,
How can meeting then arise?
They and I must find a new way,
Each to see with better eyes.

If my eyes could lock with their eyes,
If their eyes could fix on mine,
Then our hearts and souls embracing,
"You and I might jointly shine."

But this call is first upon me,
I who stand and walk on by,
By my care they must see past me,
Up and on into the sky.