Who crafts moments swollen with such peace? Who accounts for the touch of lives brushing briefly against each other? Who writes stories in the quiet that take shape in the noise?
If I could write a story that would connect the stories from only this week it would be beautiful, moving, amusing, exhausting... it would read like life and you would be older having finished it.
Instead I write a song of moments, and dedicate it to a much better Author.
In praise of the Who:
It was the watermelons that made us giggle,
perhaps the taste of the word on our lips,
enhanced by the sight of them rolling on the street,
we three bound together with the cord of amusement.
It was the memories that made us smile,
our eyes glazed as we returned to the past,
a relationship built from time and cups of tea,
this student of mine with a long, black braid.
It was the bare office where one man sat,
Staring in silence at a pale computer screen,
there entered a foreigner bearing stories galore,
a text, a joke, and a face of stone melted.
It was the pizza, recipe now memorized,
that drew the three teachers into my home,
perhaps loosening their jaws to let secrets spill out,
to be pooled up in a foreigners ears.
It was the shy, broken English of a student slurping noodles,
that made me giggle as a story formed,
of another teacher drawing him out of the class,
to ask if he watched dirty movies on the internet.
It was the way the beggar walked with me,
arms leaving black rings around my legs,
their faces tilted upward as I washed them with a towelette,
then hands outstreched to be cleaned as well.
It was a newspaper shred from a nearby desk,
my students article that filled me with pride,
the depth of ideas strained to be expressed,
caused all the grammatical errors to fade.
It was the steaming stack of yellow pancakes,
on a metal bench in a crowded, narrow street,
and the way I had to instruct my Tibetan friend,
how to purchase them, that sweetened their taste.
It was their mumbled Tibetan phrases of pleasure,
from a simple dinner cooked for friends,
that made me miss them deeply, immediately,
I know you will return, they declared.
It was the mixture of people's hearts revealed,
our lives dribbling, staining each other's with color,
that survive as a collage of praise and great worth,
in the eyes of the Artisan who crafts such design.
