ALONE

Hot day in April
Feels like July
Women in Sandals
Bare toes in the morning.

Sitting alone
On an early train
With Brody and Dillon
And their mom.

Mom says, ”Brody, finish your juice.”
Mom says, ”Dillon, get ready for the station.”

Standing alone
In the elevator
With Brody and Dillon and their mom,
Jostled with them in a crush of strangers.

The crowd is thicker below the waist,
Swaying in the motion of Brody and Dillon.
Dillon looks up to the eye of a stranger.
Asks, ”Why do you only have two toes?”

The stranger looks down in Baffled wonder.
”Because my shoes are covering some.”
”Only two toes,” says disbelieving Dillon.
By magic uniting the strangers.

And now the air above the waist is pulsing,
Bursting with laughter and conversation,
Strangers still talking as they step out the doors.
And I marvel at how we are joined together in a welcome explosion of community.

Doesn’t it make you wonder a little
Given the loneliness that seems so pervasive,
How it can be that we try so hard
To be alone on trains and in elevators?