“Bashô says the body is composed of one hundred bones and nine openings. | Within which flimsy structure the spirit dwells.” ~ Nicholas Christopher, from “Midsummer”

Reblogged from theparisreview

                   

The Orphanage

At the bus stop, a blind man sells colored pencils.
Ballpoint pens, too, at Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Ten cents for a pencil, two bits for a pen.
Around the corner, a boy from the orphanage
gives a bookmark to anyone who drops money into his box—
no matter if it’s a nickel or a dollar.
A different boy every day, rotating by the month.
There are that many boys at the orphanage, I am told,
and I am grateful not to be one and fearful that I could be—
these boys in their coarse blue suits and thick-soled black
shoes,
faces alternately fierce and frightened
and in their eyes the sad lights of distant ports
faintly flickering as they repeat the same refrain:
Alms for Saint Gregory,
the name of their orphanage,
the patron saint of shipwrecked sailors,
of lost travelers.

~ Nicholas Christopher

                   
Photography Credit Ruben Brulat

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