The modern gleaners

The modern gleaners

Postmodern standardized cities
ubiquitous high rises of steel and glass
concrete jungles of commerce
of buying and selling
trading moving vibration
amidst the turmoil of the bustling day
are the invisible ones

The modern gleaners that make their way
in the shadows beyond displays
quiet slow moving stealth like
modern gypsies in tattered rags
pushing shopping carts through busy streets
overflowing mosaic of plastic bottles

Old men old women mothers with their young
bent over curbs of stacks of trash
these are our modern gleaners
from the rustic farms of yore
into our urban streets

The armies of the unemployed
the disabled and the weak
they that toil all the week
ten cents a bottle ten bucks
a day to get some food to eat
if it’s right or wrong I cannot say
lets forget about it for today
And look the other way

But in the misery of their despair
I see a beauty in their eyes
as they reach for their bottles and cans
the beauty I see is their inner strength
not in the condition there

It’s in their perseverance and their will to live
it’s where the midday sun streams
and bathes the withered skin and faces
 in the golden sun      
it’s in their cloths of quilted robes
that hide their worn down skin
it’s in the carts of plastic orbs of mystic shapes
it’s in the muscles of their backs
bent summer winter  fall and spring

They work the streets juxtaposed
next to gourmet and high end shops
 Where I imagine them looking in
do they dream of such fancy things

But it fades away and focuses
out in the night of day
to their thin worn out hands
I think of those that don’t or can not see
them when there walking by

Cause to see them will shake the conditioned reality
which would become undone
to bathe and eat in splender
Next to  such plight and hunger