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