At the border

He cleared customs, his throat and spent shell casings. He exchanged one denomination of printed paper money for another undetermined valued added currency with a malnourished homeless child.

The child's wearing blood red ragged shorts and broken sandals. He's sticking a needle into his scrawny arm standing in the gutter of his broken down existence full of suffering and futile hope in Dhaka, Bangladesh near a sacred bull wallowing in dust.

One million starving people swarmed around my pedicab beating on fractured windows pleading for help.

They screamed, “We want charity and love. We are afraid to die, to be abandoned by our friends and family. This is our karma. We have no home, no food. We are refugees from the country. We have lost hope. We are desperate and alone.”

His heart trembles, feeling a deep sadness witnessing their poverty, suffering and pain. His karma is to absorb this horror. He is not rich. He cannot save everyone. What can one person do in this world? He swallows particles of inherited dust.

He looks at ALL the beauty and cruelty without hope or fear.