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Posts Tagged ‘greeting’

On the Street in Lancaster, Ohio

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on October 8, 2025| 10 Comments »


 
 
I like your costume,
the woman said, and I said,
Thank you. Thing was,
I wasn’t wearing a costume.
I was dressed as me,
a middle-aged woman
in tall black boots,
black yoga pants,
a long gray sweater
and my dad’s gray hat.
It wasn’t till after she left
I laughed, delighted
to be called out on
dressing up as myself,
a person I’ve been
trying to be my whole life.
And where, I wondered,
does the costume end?
Does it include my hair?
My skin? My name?
My stories? My resume?
My voice? All of it
a costume of self
worn by whatever
is most alive inside.
This human frame
is just some get-up the infinite
has slipped into for a time,
even as it slips into other
costumes, one that looks
exactly like you. And hey,
I like your costume.

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For When We Greet Each Other

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on November 10, 2024| 28 Comments »


 
 
I want a new ritual for when we meet each other—
strangers or beloveds, friends or rivals, elders or children.
It begins by holding each other’s eyes
the way we behold sunrises or the first cherry blooms,
which is to say we assume we’ll find beauty there.
And perhaps some display of open hands—
a gesture with palms up—that suggests both
I offer myself to you and I receive you.
There should be a quiet moment in which
we hear each other breathe—
knowing it’s the sound of the ocean inside us.
If there are words at all, let them be formed
mostly of vowels so they’re heard more as song
than as spitting, more like river current and less
like throwing stones, words that mean something like
I do not know what you carry, but in this moment
I will help you carry it. Or something like,
Everything depends on us treating each other well.
And if we said it enough, perhaps we’d believe it,
and if we believed it enough, perhaps we’d live it,
treating every other human like someone
who holds our very existence in their hands,
like someone whose life has been given us to serve,
even if it’s only to walk together safely down the street,
hold a door, pass the salt, share a sunset,
offer a smile, and say with our actions you belong.

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What Hands Can Do

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on November 20, 2018| 2 Comments »

 

 

 

In my country, he said, we take strangers

by the hand when we greet them.

His taxi wove through the northbound cars

on Lakeshore Drive, and I watched his eyes

in the rearview mirror as they searched

the lanes for where to go. It’s strange,

perhaps, he said, to offer someone

your bare hand, but it’s a nice gesture,

I think. In the world beyond the car,

how many strangers did we pass

in one minute? How many chances

to reach toward another and say

Hello, or as they say in Bosnia,

Zdravo? How many chances

to open some small part of ourselves

and trust the other to do the same?

I wanted to disagree with the man.

I wanted to tell him, that’s what

we do in this country, too. But

clearly his experience told him otherwise.

Here, he said, people shake at the end

of a conversation to make a deal.

But not at the beginning. At least

not with strangers.

I want to start a revolution. I want

our country shake hands more.

I want us to extend ourselves

toward those we don’t know,

to offer them something of ourselves,

to be vulnerable, welcoming, kind.

When I got out of the car, I thanked the man

in his tongue, as he’d taught me, Hvala.

I paid with the credit card in the back.

I didn’t reach forward to seal the deal.

I stepped out grateful for what he gave me—

one more way to revere creation,

one more way to honor what hands can do.

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Split Second Decision

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on January 10, 2013| 4 Comments »

 

 

 

She says, How are you?

And there is no right way

to answer this. Tell her, Fine,

and she can smile and you

 

can smile and move on

to the business at hand.

Or tell her, Oh, you know,

and shrug, and then ask

 

about her day. There are

waterfalls inside you,

steep icy roads, sirens,

tall golden grass as far

 

as the eye can see,

and for every moment

that you might mention

to her—when he did this or they

 

said that, or you knew

whatever it was that you knew—

there is all the space

between those moments,

 

that space perhaps even

more important than

anything that happened.

How you felt the world

 

dissolve before it returned.

How everything spills,

ravels, pours out. It’s truer

than anything else you know.

 

But how do you say this?

So you say, Fine. Or you don’t.

You say, well, there’s no way

to say what you will say.

 

So you open your mouth,

wondering if a black bird

or a beetle or a little lie

or your heart might fly out.

 

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