Homeless In Petaluma HOMELESS IN PETALUMA by MICHELLE BAYNES Photos by DEBRA SIMONS Edited by DAVID MADGALENE and Published by NEW WAY MEDIA If you think you can tell who is homeless You are mistaken Oh sometimes It is obvious A cart A face layered with days on the street I’m telling you If I lined up 30 people Half homeless You could not pick out all who were homeless There isn’t much difference between a homeless person and a housed person Mental illness Weathered skin Crazy eyes Drugs & alcohol Domestic violence Beards and whiskers It’s just that people don’t really see Don’t really look -Michelle Baynes, from Homeless In Petaluma Michelle Baynes has worked with the homeless in Petaluma, California for years. In this book she reveals, with straightforward candor, what she’s seen and heard on the streets and under the bridges. We hear the voices of the forgotten and forsaken, and in the startling black and white photographs we see the frayed edges of a town not unlike every small town in the United States. Tough, heartbreaking, compassionate and true, Baynes is our witness to the struggles of these citizens’ daily lives. Through her eyes, the people who live on our spare change are no longer invisible. —Dorianne Laux In Homeless in Petaluma, Michelle Baynes depicts the lives of our "invisible" neighbors: refugees of the streets who carry their troubles, poverty, loneliness, illness, or addictions more visibly than those blessed with the sanctuary of home. Here are poems of witness, clarity, and honesty that teach us the dignity of a man sleeping under the D Street Bridge, the prayer in a tattoo of the Virgin Mary, the fear that keeps a woman walking all night, and the grief that blocks the heart from its own wishes. "I need to find a thread of hope," the poet says in the face of so many unraveled dreams, and through her compassion, her faith in the listener, she weaves that thread for us. —Terry Ehret, author of Lucky Break Homeless in Petaluma poignantly shows who the people on the street really are—their challenges, their shortcomings, and their earnest hopes for a better life. —John Records, Executive Director, COTS (Committee on the Shelterless)