Bernie Sanders

Most people I know don't really care about politics, or care only in the way politics is presented by the people who rule them.

Sometimes I am literally overcome with a desire to help other people--poets, for instance, women poets particularly--and other times I don't really care at all.

More often now when the desire to help another comes over me it passes as quickly as it comes.

How easy it is to become one of those people who is lost, but who thinks everyone else is lost.

You know the type! They're among your oldest, dearest friends. They're concerned to the point of anger about almost everything--all the injustice, the budget deficit, Mexicans, the ridiculous salaries paid to professional basketball players, the possibility that gays and lesbians can now become scout leaders--all the non-issues that get people who are lost so excited.

Sometimes when you're talking to them on the telephone you have to hold the phone at least six inches from your ear.

Once in awhile you bring the mouthpiece close and say, ah or uh hh or yeah or hmm or maybe, and they think you're listening to them and so they continue talking about all the things wrong with the world.

But you're not really listening. You're lost too, wondering how you came to have old friends who seem so lost.

And you wonder what you can do to help them.