A Heart Divided...

I am of two minds, it seems,
or is it just my heart divided,
parsed into pieces,
pulled to places far and wide...
for here I sit in my lovely blue living room,
a place of cheer and comfort,
a place secure where I can spend
long hours far from traffic noise
and people noise (though barking dogs too often
add their noisy punctuation to my day),
surrounded by small things
I love and photos of the ones
I hold both near and dear...
while not so many blocks away
those I do not know come to be fed,
come to be sheltered, come to find the safety
which their lives do not provide...
while far away across the globe
those countless ones, known and unknown to me,
long to be fed, long to be sheltered, long
to find safety which their lives cannot provide...
So, where do I put my deepest concern?
Where place the pieces of my broken-open heart?
     And how do I put it all
          back together again?

Written the day after the death of Steve Jobs:
 
Steve Jobs has died of pancreatic cancer,
and headlines scream and
countless words of acclamation
have been written, spoken, blogged,
and tweeted...more will follow,
as the world mourns the death
of a technology pioneer
who changed the face of daily life
for countless numbers...
            AND
a child has died of starvation...another
and another still...numbering in the thousands,
as headlines stay silent and words
of sorrow remain unwritten...as their families
mourn alone, the death of one small child
changing nothing in the daily lives
of countless numbers...
            or does it?
                 Should it?
                       Will it?