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“ Where The Lost Abound ”
– desperate to be whole –
In small cafes,
I sat around
Watching arrays
Of lost abound,
There but to play
Said morose lives,
That slip away
With wary anguish…
I linger here
To write of life,
That so abounds
In abysmal strife,
Till muse absconds
Urge to describe,
Their sad parade
In a despondency
That blurs its find,
Yet when about
To write the line,
Their faces fade
As tho I’m blind…
So as I glimpse
This pot-pourri,
A mere semblance
Of the reality I see,
In a poor writ play
Of wretched beings,
Moving mindlessly
Looking for a soul,
As they move round,
Desperate to be whole
Thru that turbulent sea,
Where the lost abound!
© Jean-Jacques Fournier
Music, Lazy Sunday- by Smooth Jazz
Pictures , MD and private collection
Oh, Jean-Jacques, a brilliant, yet poignant, reminder of those who strive “to be whole.” This reminds me of this quote by Wallace Stegner from his book Angle of Repose. “Home is a notion that only nations of the homeless fully appreciate and only the uprooted comprehend.”
I hadn’t heard the Wallace Stegner quote before. It’s a good complement to Jean-Jacque’s poem.
Thank you, Liz, for this much appreciated acknowledgement…
Jean-Jacques
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You’re most welcome, Jean-Jacques.
Thank you!!!!
You’re welcome!
Thank you, Rebecca. It isn’t hard to imagine the lot of the lost and uprooted save the level of emotional pain they are made suffer. But then again, I’ve no doubt they too must find it hard to imagine, how mankind’s scientific advances have not found the way to include measures that should eliminate our fellow beings condition inferred in this reflection…
I was moved by your poem. Aside from the physical danger and psychic despair of living on the streets, people who are homeless tend to be viewed as less than human. Last night I read a short story, “The Abandoned Kid,” by a former family therapist, in which he created a first-person narrator to speak for all of the lost children he worked with. As I read your poem, the thought crossed my mind that every homeless person we walk past on the street should have a poem to give voice to his or her story.
https://necroproductions.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Justice-Issue-3-Published-by-Necro-Magazine.pdf (p. 41)
Thank you again, dear Liz, and what a touching idea and suggestion, that of giving voice to the story of each homeless person living on the streets as in with, a little help for my friend, so to speak, but I should add substantially more of useful help that is, by and thru our elected so called managers, to whom we allow charge of our affairs and financial contributions etc. that is meant to serve all, and not just the wealthy and the powerful…!