SILENT GREETINGS                                                                        

He sat at a metal mesh table on a matching bench,

smoking each time I passed at the end of each day –

noticeable because he looked, when he smoked,

right in the eyes of  strangers as they walked, sauntered, staggered, ran

either to or from the river; a look that said I am, you know, like you

and then said and I am one of you. This he knew, as I knew;

his greeting designed to win the eyes of others too.

 

And so he might: a thing of the Earth, like me, like them,

possessed of an absolute right to call on his peers’ attention,

not least by the eloquence of his eyes, which said, gently:

look, and so hear me; first, watch the louche limousines,

the glide-by glitterati, then the hunched, bent bodies of

the rootless, the roofless, the route-less souls, the rest,

and tell me they are not of the same flesh.

 

Never exchanging words in any other way, after a while

eyes would meet quite naturally, with acknowledgment of

what was meant by him, by me, in those brief moments of

snatched how are you’s, plus some quiet confirmation

that the world was still here, and good, and could be very good,

were we all to see and do, to point the finger at us not you –

he and I did speak on this and knew it to be true.

 

You might say that’s just putting words, never his,

into his mouth, imputing eloquence after the event.

But if words rise up within and start to flow only on

another’s prompt, a look, a sigh, a tear, a smile,

there is dialogue or a duet in that, a joint authorship

that I will readily concede, not needing any legal discourse

nor heeding voices that would close the doors.

 

But nothing endures. I passed by his spot the other day,

to find metal mesh bench and table gone – so, necessarily,

he gone too – a feature of my end of day now

lacking, missed. I guess at his destination: another

place where he might work on people’s eyes, be safe,

be part of the lives of passers-by who’ll stop to look,

maybe even step inside his new home in the pages of a book.