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Posts Tagged ‘strangers’

It Just Might Happen

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , 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.

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There, In the Cupboards at the Cancer Center

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , 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.

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Return Address from Ohio

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , 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.

 

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To the Person in the Red Station Wagon

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , 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.

 

 

 

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In the Airport

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , 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.

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Of Strangers

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , 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.

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Secret Agents

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , 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.

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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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United

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on November 28, 2015| 5 Comments »

 

 

 

 

For three and a half hours,

the man in 25 D and I

sit beside each other

and do not speak.

Somewhere, I like to imagine,

is a woman who wishes

that it were she

who got to be the woman

sitting in 25 E. I wonder

what she is doing right now,

perhaps twirling a strand

of her hair and remembering

the way his voice warms

when he says her name.

It occurs to me

that in every seat is a human

who loves and who wants

to be loved. A plane

of lovers, we are,

all of us politely minding

our elbows, traveling

with our seatbelts low

and tight across our laps.

And though we’ve never

met before and will likely

never meet again, and though

we may not even speak

to each other as we fly, just

think of it, all that love

traveling across the country

through a turbulent sky.

 

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