No tears for their fellow Unhoused,
each one gathered to the table set for all,
three noonday hot meals a week,
Sunday breakfast, a pastor’s word
for aggrieved apostles welcomed here:
still waters, green pastures.

They weep not for themselves
but for the passing of companion pets
who found them tucked, tight
impediments at city crosswalks,
and offered the solace of a wet nose,
a doggie kiss, nothing asked in recompense.

And what of the children delivered into
dismantlement, the moon and stars
spinning untethered from the merrily-we-go-round
the baby in the bassinet, reaching up to calm
the constellations, calliope music
of the spheres. Consider the childhood dollhouse,
its baby-grand piano pondered as if its placement
a held note in a measured composition.

The lapsed Poet records the Neighbors’ names
in his pocket notebook, a middling substitute
for Saint Peter’s ledger at the gates of heaven,
this raucous crowd of joyful noise
lifting the Poet into their orbit of Light
overcoming, for this hour of Communion,
the Outer Darkness.

He pours each one a glass of sweet iced tea,
then asks if they have a poem.