Before becoming homeless, you should know that people will not treat you as a full human being with needs, rights and sensibilities akin to those of the rest of the human race.
A young person said to me once: "I would have no idea what to say to a homeless person."
"That's easy," I replied. "Talk to them about anything except homelessness."
As I have been sheltering in place in the quietude of my apartment in North Idaho, I found myself wondering how people have been doing in the place where there is no shelter.
I started to think about all those people we had just talked about at Coffee Talk – the people sleeping under downtown bridges or in doorways of businesses closed for the night or in their cars.
Most poets, a lot of them whom I know well, made it to town just three days after a driver hit three homeless people who were sleeping up against a wall in North Spokane.