I have some poems up my sleeve, for now here is one about finding one lonely person amid a crowd of strangers – and how simply listening to them, acknowledging them, made them open up with their pain, their issues – and how a sense of connectedness arose despite wildy differing circumstances from my own.

The Strangers

The strangers passed her one by one
as she asked for directions
and I stopped to stare at my own tears
in her booze bleared eyes as she explained:
“just the one drink after work,
Just this one last drink”.

In a minute her lifestory unfolded –
married, with a son, a full time job
and the alcohol, the alcohol,
the hurt, the suffering it caused her
“But it hits the spot” she said,
blinking my strangerness away.

She left for her one last drink,
went to undo the demons for an hour
as i walked into sunshine and strangers,
eyes sparkling with suffering,
and no distance left between our breath
or our beating hearts, no distance at all.