“The Scales Fall Away” by Robbie Gamble

Well, yes,
I was found
to be swelling
the ranks of this nation
of petty addicts. We wandered
the landscape, our blinkers askew.
There were thresholds everywhere,
and we scuffed them all
with our little cloven angel feet.
Eventually, we learned not
to ruminate on justice, but to stand
back and watch the skies,
and then we began to discover untended parcels
left on our morning subway commutes. Sometimes
we even ignored the security warnings,
and opened them. Of course, we continued
to hoist up daily on callused knees,
anointing each other with spit and sacred mud,
floundering in our ever-widening vision.

 

 

Robbie Gamble is a nurse practitioner who works with the homeless, helping them gain
access to health care. His poetry has been published in Poesy, Edgz, The Christian Science Monitor, Ibbetson St., and Nerve Cowboy