My Brother's Keeper

Recently I read Otherwise, a collection of new and selected poems by Jane Kenyon, including the last poems she wrote before dying of leukemia in 1995.  One of my favorite Kenyon poems is "Man Sleeping," a short piece that calls us to care for the homeless: Large flakes of snow fall slowly, far
apart, like whales who cannot find mates
in the vast blue latitudes.

Why do I think of the man asleep
on the grassy bank outside the Sackler
Museum in Washington?
                                    It was a chill
afternoon. He lay, no doubt, on everything
he owned, belly-down, his head twisted
awkwardly to the right, mouth open
in abandon.
                He looked
like a child who has fallen asleep
still dressed on the top of the covers,
or like Abel, broken, at his brother's feet.