Soliciting

There we go again, perennials
coming up in springtime gardens
offset by the perennial staging
of neighbourhood canvasses
for health charities. Volunteers
doing their door-to-door soliciting
writing out receipts to reflect
the value we place on health
education, disease sufferers'
support, and research funding.

This is an occupation, brief as
it is, not for the faint-of-heart.
For it is no mean conceit to knock
on doors, pleading the home-owner
part with precious cash resources.
Many resent this social inconvenience
right mightily, and icily stare down
the volunteer, an irritating mendicant
albeit nonetheless a neighbour.

At other homes, a cheerfully
welcomed guest, whose cause and
its messenger are honoured with
respect and the generosity of an
open wallet, weather and social
comments gratuitously fulsome.

These are the moments that bind us,
or blind us to the social contract that
no man is an island to himself, and that
which strikes down others, strikes
us all as well. Pluralist in ideas
but not in values, we offer ourselves
so that ill humours may be countered.