I sat for hours in concourse A,
the plane delayed, delayed again,
surrounded by a young mother
with three hungry children and two
elderly couples who played endless
rounds of go fish and men in dark suits
on their cell phones and girls filming
dances for TikTok, when I looked up
and saw out the window a double rainbow,
ridiculously pretty against the slate sky,
and not wanting to be alone in my joy,
I touched the arm of the boy beside me
and he leaped up and ran to the window,
and all of us stopped to point or smile
or make jokes about pots of gold.
We will never see each other again,
but for a moment, we stood together
at the edge of delight, and the rainbows,
they just kept getting brighter, and I thought
it couldn’t possibly get any more lovely.
And the boy smiled at me. And then it did.
Posts Tagged ‘strangers’
Among Strangers
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged airport, beauty, rainbow, strangers, travel on July 25, 2026| 8 Comments »
While Sitting in 7F
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged airplane, connection, joy, story, strangers, travel on June 13, 2026| 4 Comments »
The woman in 7D reads me an essay
she wrote for her husband in 7E
about how they first met at a party
when his hair was dark and thick.
He is bald now. She is gray, as am I,
but in those moments before take off
we three thrum with the thrill of that first
uncertain glimpse, and I enter the Hollywood
party with them, him in yellow suspenders,
her riding high on recent success.
They were strangers twenty minutes ago,
but now I am cheering for them—
for the people they were almost forty years ago
as they went out for coffee, then talked
through the night. Cheering, too, for who
they are now, no longer strangers, but Ellen and Bruce,
a writer and retired architect, who will likely
never remember meeting the woman in 7F,
but for tonight, something unspeakably lovely
happens as we fly over Chicago and Detroit
and we are woven into each other’s lives
for a few hours, a momentary plot full of laughter,
tenderness, and a spontaneous, shimmering joy,
while all around us the world goes dark.
One Night on Broadway
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged city, love, strangers on December 4, 2021| 6 Comments »
walking the crowded street—
how many thousands of invitations
to fall in love
It Just Might Happen
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged hope, love, strangers on August 2, 2020| 10 Comments »
Everywhere I go, I find them—
people who bring love to the world.
Reading the headlines,
I sometimes think love is dead
and humans are brutes
and we may as well all give up.
But every time I leave home,
I meet pedestrians who wave
and women who give understanding nods,
and men who offer to pay when the person
in front of them is short a few bucks.
People hold doors for each other with a smile
and I’ve seen folks pick up trash
off the sidewalk and go out of their way
to not step on a beetle or a worm.
My friend Wayne says,
We have to love the world
to want to save it,
and sometimes, I think
it just might happen—
though every day unspeakable cruelty
happens on these same streets.
Oh this world.
Even as I feel my guard go up,
I see strangers chatting on the corner
as they wait for the bus,
notice how their laughter
threads through the noise of the day
like a song, like a kite.
There, In the Cupboards at the Cancer Center
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cancer, healing, kindness, knitting, poem, poetry, strangers on November 21, 2019| 4 Comments »
Someone has crocheted a half dozen blankets—
one dark purple, another camo green, another
with stripes in every possible color.
There are half a dozen quilts with bright squares.
And someone has knit a dozen hats—
and a basket on the shelf overflows with handmade scarves.
My friend chooses a pink cotton pillow
that someone has sewn in the shape of a heart
and a long creamy scarf, impossibly soft.
She would rather be anywhere but here,
but look at that smile as she dons the scarf,
as if its stitches are keeping her from falling away.
Return Address from Ohio
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged kindness, poem, poetry, secret, strangers on September 14, 2019| 5 Comments »
And out of the manila envelope
came a new white hand towel
hand embroidered with colorful flowers,
each one a bright celebration
of what a small amount of thread
and a steady hand can do.
Another cloth, this one edged
in a red and white lace crochet,
seemed proof that framing changes everything.
A photo of two women laughing.
A pink ribbon holding it all together.
A pink sticky note, that read
in a neat, old-fashioned script:
To Rosemerry, from Secret Agents.
There are days I can hardly
believe my good fortune—
just when the headlines
are their worst, a stranger
will reach out with a wild
and tender kindness that frames
the moment with joy,
reminding me that I, too,
might stitch thoughtfulness
and beauty into everything I do,
then share it with the world.
To the Person in the Red Station Wagon
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged friendship, love, mistake, poem, poetry, strangers on September 11, 2019| Leave a Comment »
I was so excited to drop the impromptu Valentine
in through the car window—a white heart
with a big blue eye at its center that I’d ripped
into shape from an old magazine cover.
It slipped through the open window
and landed just right on the driver’s seat,
the eye facing up, the heart facing the door.
Imagine my surprise when my friend Kyra
told me she hadn’t been in town today.
Really? I asked her, stunned. Really, she said.
Because who would think there were two
red station wagons in town with the passenger door
bashed in and the back full of camping gear?
Dear stranger in the red station wagon who parked in town,
I know I didn’t give you the heart on purpose,
but I’m so glad I did. Sometimes our mistakes
have so much to teach us. Now I know
how I want to treat strangers: Like beloved friends.
Like people I thrill to shower with love.
In the Airport
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged airport, kindness, mother, poem, poetry, strangers, tenderness, travel on July 20, 2019| 10 Comments »
I wonder who else today
in Concourse A
is traveling to see their mom
in the hospital, who else
has a parent with a surgery
gone wrong? Who else
could use some tenderness—
perhaps that woman in green
on the transporter? Or maybe
the young mother chasing her child
on the moving walkway? Or
the middle-aged man deliberating
over snacks? Today, it seems
so obvious that all of us
need some tenderness—
regardless our story.
And so when the man
in 31 C offers to lift my suitcase
and fit it somehow
into the overhead bin,
I almost weep with relief,
but instead I smile and say
Thank you, yes, I need help.
All day, I think of how
one small generosity changes
the landscape of the heart.
All day, I am met with chances
to be grateful, to be kind.
Of Strangers
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged amor fati, kindness, poem, poetry, strangers on February 18, 2019| 6 Comments »
And so it is that kindness stays with me,
the way the woman in the store smiles at me
when she can tell I might start to cry.
I carry her smile in my pocket all day,
like a coin, something I carry everywhere
with no effort, but sometimes forget, and then,
when my fingers again find the ridged edges,
when I feel the weight of the coin in my palm,
I am struck by how something so small
carries value, carries meaning. All day
the smile stays with me. All day, I touch
it again and again, feel how its weight
tips some invisible scale, how I remember
again to say hello to fate and fall in love.
Secret Agents
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged abundance, friendship, gratitude, poem, poetry, strangers on January 23, 2019| 5 Comments »
for Sherry Richert Belul
With a LOVE stamp, the woman I’ve never met
mailed me five dollars, “to be a reminder
that abundance can come unexpectedly,”
she wrote, and sitting with her letter in my lap,
I thought of last night’s snow—
five white inches that fell after midnight
and softened the whole hard world.
And I thought of the orchid on my mantle
that sprouted a new stem of purple buds
even as the other stem continued to bloom.
And I thought of my office mate bringing in
nine tins of exotic teas to share. And my daughter
sending me a text to say she loved me “soooo much.”
And I thought of a woman in a town a thousand
miles away, a woman I have never met,
who thought, “I think I’ll send five dollars
to someone who brought abundance into my life.”
How simple it is to manifest unforeseen joy.
How clear the invitation to extend gratitude,
to spread good will, to remind each other
how the world will offer itself, will open
and open and open, how we, ourselves,
are the agents of the world.