Yesterday, on planet earth

The sun blared out with burlesque boldness, no longer reticent behind its veil of clouds.
The woman on the street in front of me waved her dollar bill in the air. "This is for you," she told the homeless woman in the lawn chair outside the Starbucks(R). "No, I don't need a paper. I already have one."
Under this exchange I felt a familiar, urgent chugging and looked up into the broad, high, red face of fire truck idling in the taxi stand, dropping off two responders to respond to the scene.
Murmuring witnesses and curious passers-by, figure-eighted around each other trying to catch a glimpse of the man on the ground. Red pants and carefully tied, well-worn, brown leather shoes. He was in a fetal position, dazed but breathing, saliva pooling beneath him. He was an older man and disabled.
I always lose my breath when I see such pageants. And it takes me a while to find it again --caught in my chest, wrapped around a tiny sob, or fanning my fluttering heart.
The sun soaked right through my clothes as I stood waiting to cross the street, feeling through my shoes where the pavement is textured for the blind. My back was to the fallen man and his rescuers. My prayers ravelled out to intertwine with his fate.