In my quest to catch up on my reading, I just finished Sally Zakariya’s The Unknowable Mystery of Other People, another short book of poems published by The Poetry Box, which also published Liz Nakazawa’s Painting the Heart Open. Though it’s a little longer than Nakazawa’s book, it still only contains 29 poems.
Luckily, many of those 29 poems are quite moving, none more so (at least for me) than Treavor Times Three, an opening sequence of three poems about a disabled veteran who stands on a corner asking for donations. We learn a lot about Treavor in these three short poems, and a lot about ourselves. My favorite poem is the second section:
2 Change for a Funeral
No black man's gonna bury my momma,
Trevor says, that's what she told me,
only she used a different word.
He’s talking about the Appalachian
woman who shared his spot and how
her family turned its back on her — didn’t
even visit when she lay dying in the hospital.
I went there every day-she was my friend.
He looks down. Folks give me change, he
says, and I save it up in those big water jugs.
Years of nickels, dimes, and quarters
enough to pay for his friend's funeral,
enough to see her safely in the ground,
see her safely in the hands of the Lord.
Her daughter didn't care. She’s got six
kids, all Bible names — some Christian.
The light goes green. We hand Treavor
a few dollars and wish him a good day.
We drive on, wondering if we’ve
really done our Christian best.
This poem confronts us, confronts our values and beliefs from the very beginning, makes us feel the same way I often do when confronted by someone begging right after I’ve had an expensive dinner out. How ironic that the Appalachian woman begging on the corner still looks down upon blacks, though perhaps not as ironic as that her own family looks down upon her, apparently rejecting her because she’s standing on a corner begging. Prejudice apparently begets prejudice.
In startling contrast to the woman’s prejudice against blacks is Treavor’s revelation that he paid for the woman’s funeral with “years of nickels, dimes, and quarters when her own family rejected her, fulfilling the Marine motto of no man left behind. The reader is forced to confront their own prejudice that the homeless are only concerned with self-survival.
The poem also raises the question of what it means to be a Christian. Treavor wants to see “her safely in the hands of the Lord,” and can’t understand why the daughter, whose kids all have Bible Names, would ignore her as she lay dying.
In the end, even the narrator wonders if she has truly done her best as a Christian by giving Treavor a few dollars. The readers, like the speaker, are left unsettled — aware that quick acts of charity may not equal genuine love or justice.
I’ll have to admit that I thought the author’s interaction with Treavor, as discussed in all three poems, was fictional. That doesn’t seem to be the case, though, as there is a link to Falls Church Values Veterans, which Treavor helped to found.
I liked Zakariya’s book so much that I went to Amazon and downloaded another of her works. Alternatively, you can find her blog here
If I hadn’t been retired from teaching for 17 years, I’d present this poem to my class. It encourages students to examine their stereotypes and fosters empathy for others.
Of course, it’s one thing to question whether we are doing enough for others, but it’s much harder to live up to the biblical standards suggested in this song by Bruce Cockburn.