23 Comments
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Bruno Bettati's avatar

I Love poetry. And i love your words.

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Kathleen Hobbs's avatar

Thank you I'm such a novice .

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Deborah Thompson's avatar

I love the simplicity of this poem, and how it strikes such a chord in so many of us. I worked at a mental health & addictions team in downtown Vancouver Canada for over thirty years until my diagnosis of cancer last March. I miss my incredible colleagues and so many of the clients, many of them homeless, who I got to know and become friends with as they attended the team. So many people don’t know what they go through, what their story is, and how they suffer. Thanks for this.

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Kathleen Hobbs's avatar

Deborah thank you for reading and commenting you have a special place in my heart for taking care of those less fortunate.

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Kathleen Hobbs's avatar

Thank you

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Jonathan Potter's avatar

Good poem

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Richbee's avatar

Once untouchables in India; in between redemption fulfilling karmic debt. Free in a sense yet housed in shatter shambles. Wealth all around yet cardboard coffins to sleep. The people peer, pass by avoid talking. Yet the homeless are neighbors displaced by chain link fences and white pickets. Some thing is rotten. The apple core is hollow.

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Kathleen Hobbs's avatar

Despicable and inhuman is how we treat the less fortunate. Rotten to the core. you're so right on Richard, the wealthy never see the reality right in front of their eyes. Nor will they ever as long as it doesn't affect them, it's forgotten.

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Marc Mannheimer's avatar

Rain-simple, and refreshing, and moving.

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Rob Riley's avatar

we're all piling up in our own storehouse, just like the Bible says, and for what?

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Wendy  Gray's avatar

Souls in need of our compassion, empathy, love, and understanding. Your writing gives all who are without a home, a place of acknowledgement and recognition. May we all SEE them and do what we can to help them feel less alone and unnoticed. Bless you, Kathleen.

Many blessings and MUCH LOVE,

~Wendy💜🙏

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Kathleen Hobbs's avatar

Much love to you also Wendy.

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Jed Moffitt's avatar

Sober and beautiful. Will keep it in mind this season as I look out the car window from my warm privileged interior…

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C.J. Heck's avatar

My heart goes out to the homeless. Thank you for your poem —it will help to keep them in people’s minds, especially at this time of year.

🎄🎄🎅🤶

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Pamela Leavey's avatar

Reminds me of L.A. So many homeless there.

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Rod Bluhm's avatar

This is so touching, Kathleen. “Whatever you did not do for the least of these, you did not do for me.”

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Lord Skei's avatar

Well written and goes straight to the heart. For me as a servant of God it is so far from my reality that there actually are people who have to struggle through life just like this. The law is, it really is, holy. We are to treat others as we ourselves would that we were treated. And this goes for every living being, not just humans. There was a man, some 2000 years ago, who gave his life for us. This man was born a Prince, his earthly father was a magi, a maker of gold, he was of the house of Solomon, the king before the romans put their puppet king on the throne. Of course the Romans had to get rid of the heir apparent, so they invented a story.. just setting up a backstory, nothing else. We at the Church of the Magdalene love your poem.

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Larry Huber's avatar

So often, Nameless and Faceless too.

Thanks for giving them identity.

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Kathleen Hobbs's avatar

They are human beings just like the rest of us that have had a hardship. None of us are aware of, and they deserve to be loved.

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Frank Bard's avatar

Hoo ra

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Mary Susan Vaughn's avatar

Are you speaking about yourself? Are you homeless?

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Kathleen Hobbs's avatar

Definitely not. But I am empathetic to those that are.

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