I have been volunteering on Friday afternoons in a community writing project that serves people who are dealing with issues of homelessness. Generally between three and five people show up each week at our room in the public library, sometimes fewer. I am one of three writer-volunteers at these sessions, and with those numbers it has worked well for us to match up in pairs or threes and take part in individual conversations with participants.

Yesterday, however, one of our regulars appeared with about eight people in tow. He'd convinced them all that they ought to come share their stories, that they ought to write with us, and the sudden influx of new faces was overwhelming. They were uneasy, and we were uneasy too. I was particularly jangled because I'd planned to introduce a small poetry prompt to one or two people, and now I had a roomful of strangers whom I didn't yet know how to read.

There were introductions, and it was clear that the new group members ran the gambit from bitter young person, to ex-felon, to shell-shocked refugee, to grieving parent . . . the confusion and misery and anxiety were palpable, but so was the bravery they'd called on in order to enter into this strange scenario.

Still, here I was stuck with having to speak to everyone about poems, and there is no one who is more nervous about poetry than a poet.

So I introduced a tiny prose poem by the Burundian poet Ketty Nivyabandi, a poem about being homesick. It describes, vividly and economically, a city street scene . . . a street very different from a Portland one yet recognizable too. And then I suggested that they write their own descriptions of a street they knew well: perhaps one they see every day, perhaps one they recall from another time in their lives. I mentioned that, if they got stuck, they could add a word such as on, in, above, below, across, because those can be good triggers for helping a writer add details about a place.

And then every one of them sat quietly and wrote.

What they shared afterward was stunning in its beauty, and its individuality, and its emotional resonance. As they listened to each other's pieces, I could see that they, too, were stunned: by their own creations and by the words of their colleagues. I know that the three writer-volunteers were barely breathing. At this moment everyone in that room recognized that the act of reading and writing a poem can change the course of a life . . . not permanently, not alone--I don't want to exaggerate here--but the communal bond was powerful in a way that I am unable to describe.

I don't know if any of these people will manage to come back next week. Given the chaos of their lives, that alone would be a miracle of sorts. But they have intentions to try again; they have a sliver of confidence that they may, indeed, reappear. They carefully wrote down the time and place; they tried to give themselves an assignment to do it again. And they were not anxious when they left. They were smiling and tearful, in ways that I have seen at the Frost Place. They felt the power of themselves as a cadre: one with deep feelings and vital memories.

For the writer-volunteers, I think this was an afternoon of both humility and wonder. I, at least, felt as if I had done nothing except open the space and remove myself to its edges. The small poem did the work.