Out of Egypt:

another sketch of days

(this is more like a verbal pencil sketch than an actual poem: I'm tired of the denseness of prose, but don't feel like veiling myself quite so much as in "real" poetry.)

The first light snow of Oxford clarifies,
As if sky were not bare blue,
As if stone walls were not enough brown.

Dolphin-friendly tuna
At Pret a Manger, wrapped neat:
Space-age organics.

Immersed in the street's motion,
I pass the homeless hawking The Big Issue, 
The khaki-clad commuters with fur hats heavy as Russians,
The unconcerned, the street musicians, and those pulling luggage behind them,
And pray: God bless this city.
As I am, so shall they be.

Sometimes I buy the magazines that the homeless sell. Sometimes I don't. I wonder how much of "my" money (of course, I know the Church tells me nothing is actually mine) to keep, and how much I can trust others. I'm not extravagant with my own spending, but I'm learning how far frugality is from charity.