20150625 (care for disabled)

The Robert Russell Rhodes Mansion (1872), adjacent house, and later attached structures will soon be home for 30-40 developmentally delayed adults.

Tethered to his father with a rope

The light brown boy naked but for shorts and sandals

Clumsily followed the dark black man 

Shirtless sweating profusely the father 

Grimaced as he strained to pull

His son clumsily along the park path

The young teen’s wordless mouthing

The awkward motions of his head

As he flopped desperately like a fish 

Lifted from the sea on a hook and a line

Revealed a bit of the story likely started at birth

He was probably the same young man

Who stood across the street screaming

With his father one snowy morning 

Two years ago as they waited 

For the bus from the special school

I’d heard sounds like that and seen

Those flailing limbs in the late 'fifties

I was a young teen then deposited

For an hour with my grandmother

Who lived in the old ethnic neighborhood

And rented the first floor to a woman

Who worked on occasion not making much

The garbled screams grew louder as 

I sat with Grandma on her back porch

My parents away on their errand 

Grandma found her bottle and

Knocked down some schnapps

The screams finally too much to bear

She took a key from her pocket and we

Opened the door to the kitchen

The smell of feces and urine 

Poured on us like honey. Before us

Tied to a chair fixed on a platform

A man in his thirties naked but for diapers

Rocked agitatedly back and forth in his bindings

She railed at him in a flurry of Polish 

As to a dog barking and to the same effect

Hair unkempt nails untrimmed teeth 

Uneven black more than white

Gruel-crusted bowls piled in the sink

Soon the sister came home 

He calmed at her sight

We went back to the porch 

Grandma took a last swig

The Robert Russell Rhodes Mansion

Across from me will soon 

Be home for thirty to forty 

Developmentally disabled adults

Whose parents or relatives have died

Or disappeared burned out by the lonely 

Enervating burden of care 

I join my voice to the many who’ve said

We will not be judged by our power and monuments 

Rather by how we have cared

For those least among us

c. J.S.Manista, 2015