The sidewalks of my neighborhood’s main commercial thoroughfare become a mobile public forum on weekends.  Every corner is populated with advocates holding clipboards, raising money, gathering signatures, distributing materials, seeking membership, spreading awareness.  It’s a beautiful thing this backyard town hall.  But sometimes I’m just looking to get from one errand to the next.  Other times, (often, I confess) I’m simply strolling to clear my head, and resist attempts by fellow citizens to fill it with new inputs. That’s a product of our web-wired lives, I suppose.  We can conjure news of the world and options for action with a few taps on the keyboard.  Wonderful sites like TAKEPART.COM make it easy to engage with issues and people as frequently and intensely as we want at our own discretion, in our own way, and on our own timeline.  Online, we’re likely connecting the same dots as the street corner activists exploring organizations, and campaigns, even meeting our neighborhood’s activists in places like the Social Action Network.  Control enables more people to do more.  I covet control.  I cultivate it.

But, Saturday I slipped a bit.  Grinning with the after-stoke of a great morning, I gazed around, taking in the lovely hustle bustle of humanity in motion, welcoming conversation.  An older man caught my eye, pulled up in my path, and stood there, pressing to his chest a pile of faded newsprint.  He looked like a down-and-out Santa Claus, dressed in a tattered jacket and flat cap.  I assumed he was selling “Street News,” the paper that gives voice and opportunity to homeless individuals.  I started to reach into my bag, but he took my hand to shake it.

“I’m Bird.”

“Hi Bird, what do you have there?”

He fanned out a dozen or so copies of the Haight Ashbury Literary Journal.  The ones on top looked in decent shape, those towards the bottom appeared discolored and smudged.

I found myself wondering how long he’s had them, how many times they’d been read.

“The new ones are $3.  The older ones are $2.  And if you just want to help me, $1 is good.”

His blue eyes watch me, and then he says what I’m thinking: “You love poetry.”

“Yes,” I smile.  “Why don’t you choose which I should have?”

He thumbs through the stack.  “Ah.  You’ll like this.   I’m in this one.  So is Gene Ruggles.  He was something.  I want to read a poem for you, okay?”

So there on the sidewalk in a deep, strong voice, Bird read me a poem by Melissa McAllister:

TO M.C. ESCHER
When you return
everything will be
as you wish,
leaves, in falling,
will become birds,
ants will march
in indistinguishable ranks,
this house will be
a shell, room melting
into room, the stairs
going from basement
to attic, to basement
again, never stepping down,
and you will sit
at your study desk
and draw yourself in.

When I got to my house, I read the others, including Bird’s poem.  The volume is from summer 1996.  He lists Cambridge, Massachusetts as home.  This makes me think of Obama’s “beer summit” with Prof. Gates and Sgt. Crowley.  Sometimes people can’t see what they’ve never felt.  We must, like the poem says, draw ourselves into the picture.

NOTE FROM A FRIEND
by Bird
Spring does not
come for me,
I thought you knew,
though for this land
the crocuses and daffodils
have long since
passed the spectrum’s to lilacs

Photo of Listen Bird by: http://www.flickr.com/photos/striatic/ / CC BY 2.0