What I Want to Know

Often we find that Fate

Has left us in unhappy places.

When you look around your home

You see the hard signs of poverty and despair.

I want to know

At what moment

The Golden Child inside us all

Will rise from the gleaming center of your fearless heart

And you will get up

And tend to the children?

I want to know what you do

The moments when you weep into your hands

As the lights flicker in your home and then go off.

When will that angel rise up

From inside you

And let that house be filled

With mercy, forgiveness and love

To light the dark places?

I want to know

When the bills come and you have to decide that day

Who goes without or who gets lunch and who doesn’t

When you hug your family

They will understand in an instant

That you love them with every fiber

Of who you are

Now and always.

I want to know when they come to

Lock the door on your home in foreclosure,

At what point you hug your children

And turn with a resolute eye

To the place where the sun rises

Every day you have people to love

And love you back

And you go on.

Poverty and homelessness

Is easy to fall into.

Fate is not fair, and neat and gentle.

Having nothing can be a gift sometimes, one that calls to your Greater Self

And gives you hope where no hope could ever be,

And strength when you feel you have nothing left to give.

When the children have no one left to turn to

Is it you who in the midst of disaster

Gives them a safe place to stand

Even if it’s only within

The warm circumference of your arms?

The walls can be bare,

The food locker too sparse to support most families

But what I want to know,

What we all need to know is,

Are you loved,

And if you are

Can you feel its power?

Jim Lamoreux.