Free of Decisions

We are here to give. Even the beggar,
busy being a self-fueling belly,
can only give. He gives his street
an ugliness, a shadowed intricacy
that must be looked at or away from--
in either case requiring of us a decision
until habit slips him into a hole
in our universe before we can see him,
as we, too, become free of decision
and rich with shadowed intricacy.

Note: The hard-to-confront complexity we call a "street person" or "beggar" is, for must of us, a shadowy presence: We don't usually look at or recall a person, a face, an individuality. Such a person makes him or herself hard to confront. The point here is that we, too, become harder to confront as we erect automatic defenses about ourselves that permit us, for example, not to notice such people. The poem says it better, but over-explaining is such fun!