No Room on the Bus

Women at Calvary often find expressing themselves creatively to be a way to heal from trauma and challenges they have experienced in their lives. Volunteers at our Life Skills, Education, and Art Program lead classes like poetry, creative expression, and painting to help women direct their feelings into creative projects. Today on the blog, one of the women living at our Sister Circle program wanted to share one of her poems with our readers.

No Room on the Bus
by Carolyn

I see her most days at the bus stop,

On the corner around the way.

No need to say ‘hello’, her mind’s a thousand miles away.

She’s always standing at the same spot, arguing with someone I cannot see.

Though she’s a mystery to me, I worry you see, because one day that could be me.

I visualize that maybe thirty years or so ago she was some one’s lover, wife or mother.

I look a little closer and in a quiet moment, I see her singing to her baby while she rocks him gently to sleep.

Now I watch her hold her head low, while she repeats and weeps, “This can’t be – it can’t be so!”

Do you think I can’t relate, just because I don’t look like her, in her homeless state?

You stand by me at this bus stop and make a remark – “it’s a shame”.

I say to you – “Yes, but who’s to blame?”‘

“Do you know what it’s like for the homeless?”

“How can you think you’re better than the rest

just because you appear to have the best.

We are all in the same universe.

Life is now and never was something you could rehearse.

We need healing and love from our sisters and brothers,

because some of are sicker than others!

So what part do you play in this grand old struggle?

Will you keep your mind closed and your heart cold to the thousands of homeless, young and old.

Or will you start right here at this bus stop where we stand……For I am homeless too you see.

And one can never could ever know what could happen,

where you may end up just like me.