Considering Poverty and Homelessness

by Robert Sund

Homage to Bashō

I cannot go back now,

         for what I have not done.

Of what is done,

take—and be kind.

         I am building a voice for my grief.

Alone, on foot,

if years from now I have learned anything,

         I will wander back.

Dust will rise up

on a dry winter road

where no one has walked before.

From Poems from Ish River Country, Washington, D.C.: Shoemaker & Hoard, 2004, page 80 (originally from Ish River, 1983).