Emergency

A homeless woman groans,
inching her wheelchair
toward nowhere in particular.
It's eleven-eighteen at night.
I look at the Emergency Room workers.
They look at nobody,
afraid of the condemnation and hopelessness --
--the  bitterness -- brewing in that room of sufferers.
The woman groans some more, yet mildly.
breaking the concentration of the rest of us
who stare at workers not looking up.
Those gentle groans come from deep within.

The groaner knows.
There is no place for her.
She is not sick enough for a hospital
She is too alive for the morgue.
She is too needy to stay with friends
She is too unwell for a shelter.
There is no shelter.
There are no friends.
No hospital bed, no nurse, no doctor.
No tidy little apartment
where she could water a plant
drink tea and induce purring.
And so she groans. 
She can do nothing else.