Can You Help?

   It suns here like it's racing down rocks: a demanding deluge from sky-torn-through, we've got the Second Coming on our hands.  For those precious fistful of sun-days we get in the soggy city, we live it up. We throw off the gray shoulder clouds, shrug off the drippy, droopy shrouds and practically thrash our streets with crowds.  Free at last!, our climate's identity crisis lifts up, up, up and away the sad that otherwise hugs about the city.  I grew up frying under the sun; these rare brilliant topaz days offer to me not a reprieve from a dungeon, but a platform for people-watching, for the sun seems to be the soul owner of de-reclusifying power for the city.

   I weild some new sandals through downtown's aging streets.  I purpose to crawl behind the eyes of others - the lady with the arc-cracking heels and hair-tye for a skirt who seemed in a frantic rush, the vacant shell of a man whose cardboard sign has long since become the only visible extension of himself, the violinist whose music celebrates the new day and being alive and every financial crumb tossed into the felt but whose eyes say - deeply - otherwise.  Guilt bites at my soul every time I pass a street-dweller by, and my flimsy excuse that "I don't want be funding someone's fatal addictions" flops down lifeless at the shoe-less feet of never-shameless beggars.

   One such human being seared herself a front row seat in my memory.  I initially passed her by before stopping after a few more paces...she?  I knew things were bad since the shattering of the country's livelihood, but this was the first time I'd seen a woman with a sign.  On disintegrating cardboard held in dainty hands was a hauntingly simple almost-imperative: "Can you Help?"  I thought to myself that I surely could help, but...

   But, but, but.  I turned around and began to approach her, thinking I'd buy her lunch at a nearby mall.  She was holding a cane and wearing a long, jean skirt, and big black shoes that...oh Lord of Mercy.  The heel on her right shoe was cut away to accomodate the gnarly, lightning-struck tree trunk that was her right leg.  This poor limb was mashed, moldly and almost twice proper-sized.  My potential lunch offer would probably not come close to answering this lady's question.  But, really, who could help?

   Who of all these people flowing by like "hobo happens", resigned and safe in the there's-nothing-I-can-do-about-it lie could actually help this one?  I guess I'd like to think that if a doctor were to see this scene, he or she would stop and actually help.  I was sure now that my capacities, consisting of conversation and walking to purchase food would fall lifeless at her foot and  half-shoed dinosaur ped.  I approached anyway.

   She sweetly refused my offer, as predicted, but seemed grateful for the affirmation of her existence.  She teetered between her cane and left leg, doing the same thing to right leg that the citizens of Seattle were doing to her.  And her name is Joan.  I cannot help her, but she can help me remember that even the most beat-up of us still have needs that are not just about food, and desires that go beyond shoes.