melissaahowells
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there's a thousand million strays in this world
and I'm one of them hedged-out of a dream huddling in the rain or freezing in the snow at or near the end of (their) my line I've noticed them enough to really see them in a thousand million places talking to themselves at bus stops living in growing tent cities alone sitting in a restaurant all looking around to see if anyone notices them anymore... like the man today conversing with his plate of mashed potatoes and roast beef asking for his food to be extra-heated giving the waitress smaller tips as he ate so he can have the service he thinks others have talking to his slice of happiness that narrow piece of cheese cake not home-made near the end of his meal or the cat who we loved and adored (Blaze) all orange stripes and anticipation the little fella who isn't owned or loved or taken care of by anyone in particular but still the one who we liked to feed chunks of roasted chicken... and who played endlessly on the trunk and front motor of our golden car so happy to be noticed and appreciated and then finally sitting alone and still in the middle of the road high-lighted by the street lamp in the growing darkness of my rear view mirror as I looked back (wiping at tears in my eyes) not cared for nor belonging to anyone in particular, he died, unsheltered and needlessly, in a heat wave for who knows what reason...why?! because he had too many fleas to come in and be welcomed by the person who was supposed to care and take care of him because she too was crazy with the heat (Oh, No, Blaze...) or the time I sat alone with the infection in the teaching hospital... the illness I got caused by a singular cat bite and made worse by the cure... an experimental medication, black-boxed in Eurpoe and the center of a class action law suit in the U.S. the Intern assigned to treat me, not bothering to inform me of all of those people who couldn't be bothered to tell me about all those other patients who developed Fibromyalgia and an inability to walk as a result of being dosed that Intern, put out by how complicated my case had become and informing me of the possibility of me loosing my entire right leg up to the kneww as if she was ordering off the menu her favorite desert its a fact if you have poor insurance your outcome is tethered to economics I still love the cat (Ghuey) who bit me didn't know he had type one diabetes and how his own vet had failed to detect this in his recent blood work Ghuey was another one of those thousands of millions of unwanted strays we adopted at the shelter he was looking for his forever home-- a place where he might invest his heart and post his bulletin board of plans with little post-its of hope--- happily ever-afters and catnip and warm nights sharing a bed with heated humans Ghuey and I both have been that stray cat huddling in the rain freezing in the snow scratching at our fleas yet still filled with hope and looking for that bulletin board to pin love-me, post-its on if you looked into our eyes you would find the liquid gold of hope brimming there just like its still there in the eyes of the thousands of millions of strays everywhere have you looked, do you see? the lone man talking to his roast beef the house-less forgotten or complained about in their highway tents the forgotten graveyards of the dead, the hunted animals trying to survive in their dwindling wildernesses, the broken-winged birds and people all of them... all over the world? I wish you could do this. If not now, one day, maybe you can open your eyes... To see then feel them all and what its like to be... all the broken-winged birds all the broken-winged people and the thousands of millions of strays who need tending and mending. written directly to the page...return for edits later LEGAL COPYRIGHT FOR THIS POEM 3:52AM PACIFIC STANDARD TIME 2/23/2023 TIME AND DATE STAMPED AND ALSO FOR THIS AUTHOR/POET/WRITER MELISSA A. HOWELLS AND ALSO FOR THIS LEGALLY COPYRIGHTED AND REGISTERED SITE TITLE MELOO STRAIGHT FROM HER TILT-A-WORLD Vote for this poem |
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