exposed to your predicament
I refuse to feed my face
instead spend my free time
determining how to calm your fears
you say there is no place to go
and I say you’ve got to be kidding
if only you would accept the hand
reaching out to help you
september two thousand seventeen
copyright j matthew waters
all rights reserved
I could have been a taxi driver
picking up musicians from
Carnegie Hall
I could have been flipping a coin
dressed in zebra stripes
standing at the fifty-yard line on
Super Bowl Sunday
or just as easily stranded in Iowa City
waiting in line at Hamburg Inn No. 2
I could have been slam dunking
donuts into black coffee in
New York City like some beat cop
on Sunday morning
I could have been that priest
in the Exorcist novel
placing my hands on a child
and my faith in the Lord
I could have been a medic
or a mystic or a miracle worker
trapped inside any given war
these past thousands of years
or I could have been a starving child
looking for someone
like myself
to save me
january two thousand sixteen
copyright j matthew waters
all rights reserved
I returned to earth as an underfed
infant in a remote village
where nurses are plenty
and painted-face doctors
routinely perform miracles
Years later my dying mother
begged me in a language
I barely understood
to escape the poverty this
barren land provided and
seek refuge in the golden city
As I traveled by foot from
desert town to desert town
visions of previous lives
entered my waking dreams
detailing how I had traveled
this road centuries ago
comforting all who hungered
by first feeding their minds
may two thousand fourteen
copyright j matthew waters
all rights reserved
