The History of Us

"I call ‘stranger'" as a seating assignment
tells a lot about the passenger on the bus

you had no idea that at that very moment
that you were a whisper caught and released into the wind

another degree of separation cut from a slice of social
strata grinding in tectonically skewed nonalignment

whatever God watches over the powerful brought
you into the conversation as an example of raw beauty

a cleansing November rain, a pure oboe phrase
a scaffold out of the underworld

of that one day among the bocage when strangers
dissolved into a discourse of porch dancing.