Public Libraries

Speaking to a
homeless person
may engage you in one of the
most
intellectual conversations
you have ever had
because they
may be the
most
well-read people in America.
Laugh, if you want,
but check out
the number of
homeless people
sitting in public libraries
reading
and check out
whom they are probably
reading:
Rushdie, Pound, Hemingway,
Vonnegut, Dostoevsky;
and about what they are probably
reading:
politics, SETI, sociology, color codes,
survival.
Oh, you say,
I don't usually go to public libraries,
Dave,
so I wouldn't know.
Well, I know you don't go --
most
Americans don't anymore.
Corporate bookstores
have joined with
corporate coffee
to relegate the need for public libraries
to high school students and
homeless people.
Look at the facts and one understands:

corporate has mobile phones
public has pay phones;
corporate has double mocha decaf latte
public had fluoridated water;
corporate has millions in advertising
public has millions in overdue charges;
corporate smells like prime wealth
public smells like the grime of life;
at corporate, people check out each other's looks
at public, people check out authors' books;
and corporate has stories by unseen people
discussing their perspectives of life
while public has the actual perspectives of life
sharing a reading table with you.

Homeless people
give their stories without want of
financial recompense;
they merely seek an ear to bend,
a touch of humanity,
someone to listen.
Public
is a place unafraid of itself,
in touch with its residents,
open to those seeking
knowledge,
a card catalogue,
reference,
or shelter.
It is here that
one can
read, breathe, formulate, gather.
It is here that
homeless people
slough off the stenched burnoose
of shame and non-acceptance
forced upon by society
like a father's hand upon a helpless child's cheek.
It is here that
they have
access to what
most
of us take for granted:
feeling like
a real
person,
part of the world.
respectable,
not ignored.