for my friends at City Light Community Ministries

Living on the street doesn’t mean we’re homeless.
Should God decree the whale’s belly does not make us homeless.

Or should he grant a castor-oil plant grow over our head
then wither overnight, for hours we aren’t homeless.

A city sidewalk, backs against blackened brick,
wind-blown newspapers our pillow against homeless-ness.

Our prayer rising that God will pardon your shoes
passing us by, we the invisible homeless.

What companions find us? A pup dropped from a passing car,
a lone woman, a man furloughed, new community homeless.

Great city of Nineveh, draped in sackcloth and ashes,
rise from your somnolence, destined homeless.

We pray no plague, no virus wakes you song-less,
no impossible dream, days and nights homeless,

pulled down into the land beneath the earth,
peoples of the past forever nameless, homeless.

We reach to you hands of justice, kindness,
humbly walking with our God, Christ of the homeless.