How Strange to Find You Here

Fancy meeting you here, where

There are no jonquils, no pools of cool gray water, no orange fish, blue ducks, no yapping geese soiling the grass; in fact, there is no grass.

No Bradford pears that bloom in March, nor crimson explosion in October.

There are no boys on scooters plowing the air with one foot, no girls in sequins, toying with fat pink bows in their yellow hair.

No babies smiling at you when you show your big teeth, whimpering when your old face is in repose.

There are no young men in baseball caps pointing the wrong way or young women wearing the wrong thing or not enough, bellies peeking over faded torn jeans, thighs seeping out of skirts meant for someone else.

There are no mothers and fathers in wedded bliss holding hands and stealing kisses.

Nor mothers and fathers locked in rage, scarring their walls with thrown pots, their children with scalding words and the flat wham of a belt.

There are no beloved children here who anticipate rich lives.

No wars or uprisings on the fringes of your neighborhood and on your television screen; no television, in fact, nor phones, cellular or otherwise, no tweets, no google, no wikipedia.

No trace of Sisyphus, pushing his rag-filled shopping cart up the scenic hills of San Francisco, or was it Philadelphia? Washington?

No music, music that soothes, Brahms perhaps or Rachmaninoff; no music that makes the toes wiggle, the bottom shake.

No canvas splashed with an inscrutable pattern that stirs the imagination: I think it is a wedding cake, no, a cat, you might say were you to walk into a room and see it hanging on a well-lit mauve wall.

No piece of theater to make you peer inside yourself and draw conclusions about who you were, what you were about to become before you came to this place.

Where I never expected to meet you.

How strange to find you here.