Meg of Miriam's Kitchen, Washington, DC

I've travelled the country over and have stayed occasionally at Shelters and/or eaten at Soup-kitchens in this city or that.  I remember the most memorable I visited.
Soup-kitchens and Shelters I stayed at or ate at that to my mind are model exemplars to meet the needs of the indigent and poor
1. The shelter and soup-kitchen in Santa Barbara near the ocean and the row of hotels at the beach.
You can stay awhile if there's beds available.  The mid-day meal is open to the community while breakfast and dinner are for the overnighters.  Outstanding food  and conviviality among the guests.  You can't beat that place--if you can get in!  They help you re-locate there, too.  The ambience of the area is really untold, save that Michael Jackson had his fairy-tale home amid the area's woods and fields.
2.  LA can boast of the dedication of such groups as the Catholic Worker and an outstanding drug addiction program and rehabilitation center that helps just about anybody in hell's kitchen in need (like I was years back). Downtown is inundated with the homeless but they're not out in the Hollywood Hills yet.
3.   Honolulu's IHS system of shelters and soup-kitchens, though somewhat barebone are memorable.  Occasionally, food from the fashionable part of town come down to the IHS property line.  Notable--the people as guests you meet from around the world.  What a joyful experience and not to be forgotten--or, at least most of your encounters with whom you meet.  Social services helps to locate on the Islands, incidentally.
4.  The senior center in downtown Raleigh, NC stands out, too.  Its portions for a lunch were ok, but it's the vegetables and fruits you got to take home that is memorable.  Nice people, too, despite class differences among the diners.
5.  But for me, Miriam's Kitchen, exemplified in the leadership of the administrator Meg, is the epitome of what a soup-kitchen should be.  It must exude hope and cheer (as should any shelter establishment dealing with the same clientele); and Meg makes sure her retinue of volunteers and interns from mostly George Washington University across the street are smiling with the message while attuned to the guests' requests.  Even the servers are laughing and conversing, smiling with the crowd!  The latter seem so innocent as to never experienced any hurt or poverty!
    No, this crew could never be assembled without a watchful diligence by a woman (or, a man) imbued with a passion to ameliorate the conditions of urban life that have fostered a loneliness associated with homelessness and indigency.
     All hail to the person at Miriam's Kitchen who inspires and encourages her followers to treat those in desperate need as one of the crew she directs--MEG!!!
     And, of course the two full meals a day--M-F--are tasty treats, too!  But that goes without my saying!   

Why write poetry?

At Miriam's kitchen in DC (an eatery for the homeless and poor), I've dropped in upon occasion (when I have time or have nothing to do at that moment) on an on-going writing group that meets at one or two tables, about 5 people, in the morning after breakfast and continues on in the afternoon an hour before dinnertime.  Most poetry these folks write seems really prose structured on paper to look like a poem.  I've  copied their "free-verse!"

Anyway, I'm developing a fascination for this type of poetry (such as it is).  The class reads a poem selected by someone designated the class teacher, and everybody responds to the reading, as stimulation is wont upon them, by extending into their own mental worlds, pen in hand for a recording.

What flows hence is astounding: only by stretch of the imagination related to what they heard, but somehow found relevant by juxtaposition to a poetic rendition of something or other on a printed page.

Here are samples from my scribblings as responses to what I had heard just before I took
 pen-in-hand.

1,  Why Did It Happen?    
There has to be a reason.   
Events just don't occur.   
You bake a cake the way you did because you followed a recipe.
The light flickers in a candle because the wind blew it.
The car bashed another because the latter was in the way of the former.
So, why do I love you?
For no reason; making up a reason would be silly.  It's my hormones' at work in unpredictable fashion!

2.  What Makes Me Interesting
I'm an interesting person.  Yes, I am.  I know you'll agree
--once you learn of my exploits in steering planets to a different course;
--hear of the ludicrous methods I've deployed to significantly increase my net worth;
--prove to women that I'm the real 'Casanova'; not some cheap snake-charmer! biting my victims with my own brand of love potion.

So, why do you find 'interesting?'  Darling, remember:  Be kind!

P.S. There's a class in creative painting at the same times morning and afternoon, that I could have joined.

3.  An addition 3/12/2018.  Just in recent sessions, we've come to discern that making poetry has a social effect: namely, it can be designed and offered to a non-discerning public as an uplifting, expressive art form.  The readers of poetry, that is to say, can derive a spurt of uplift-shock that makes life more interesting and worthwhile.  Nobody wants to read a poem that is depressing and un-inspiring but just about everybody welcomes the chance to absorb the nuances of a poem that makes us feel good about ourselves and our environment.