The Beggar Poem by Caroline Misner

Like everything else in this world,
the darks are whitening,
their cheap pallors beguiled by light.
These walls are sparse and loveless.
I am the angel
come to consecrate this homeless shelter
with baubles collected over forty years
I push around in a metal cart.
Life is not divine.
I was not born into this.

On temperate days I dropp from my zeppelin
and spread to a feast for birds.
The almsgivers feel they are doing a holy duty;
they think they are pithy and virtuous,
they think they are receiving absolution from their sins.
But they are my enablers
and I know how they live.

At night I see the slash of lamplight
under their doors, hear the chimes of their voices,
curtained off from what they don’t want
to see or hear.
Without them I’d be poor.

People water me when they pass by.
I am a stone in their stream, a patch
of weeds everyone distains
but no one wants to pluck.
Sometimes I skulk in the crevices;
they seem to notice me there,
rattling my paper kettle.
They plop coins into it
as though dropping wishes
into wells.