He asked with trepidation,
"Do you know of any beds?"
"There are eighty on the waiting list,"
I said.
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Author Notes
I volunteer at my town's daytime shelter on Tuesday mornings - it's a place people come for breakfast, which is my job, and where they can receive their mail and phone calls, where they can find resources, get a shower, and a host of other services. I believe it is the holiest place I have ever been in. This morning a shy young man, younger than my own children, leaned over the breakfast counter to ask me, " Do you know if there is anywhere I can sleep tonight?" I asked at the crisis desk if they could help him, and the Center Director told me the waiting list in our county at the moment has 80 people on it. That's not 80 people waiting for a room - that is 80 people waiting for a cot in a night time dorm setting.
Norristown, the town where my Center is located, is the county seat of Montgomery County, PA, the 20th richest county in the country if you go by personal per capita income. Norristown itself is poor, but our county includes the famous Main Line where all the old money of Philadelphia society lives. You know, the place from the 1940 movie classic, The Philadelphia Story. Towns filled with mansions and cricket clubs and finishing schools and chauffeured limousines and debutante balls. This is my county, and tonight the young man who asked me if I knew of any beds is going to sleep in the rain under a bridge. I've been trying not to cry ever since I had to tell him that. My county should be ashamed. My country should be ashamed. He is just a kid.
A naani poem is a poem of 20-25 syllables that is usually about the human condition.
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