STREET CAFES

I sit in a sidewalk café

(There are not enough in this city)

a busy street – many rush by

within their own worlds

and the worlds of those with them

who share their time.

All different – every one.

Brown, white, faces, bodies

Every one

a person to themselves.

distinct and separate.

We know that now.

I watch them - some rush,

Some laugh, not hurried

I think about them

Some interesting – others not.

The short Chinese woman

wobbling a little

following her husband;

cannot keep up.

A young girl, midriff showing

An older woman - a flower person

of decades long past. Still trying.

Not interesting.

The traffic –noisily struggling.

A truck with a painted sign

for a cause. I try to read,

but it is gone, behind many others.

A woman with a stroller,

That baby will grow

to become a person

different from every other.

A man in a suit

A woman – well dressed

Why is it, that at such a moment, more women than men

still turn my head?

There are many of us.

Is what they see in me,

if they see me at all,

different from

   what I see in them?

We are all distinct.

So must we also think differently

– each one of us?

Is what they think

different  for every one?

Yet they all - we all – are asked to think

this way or the opposite.

black against white

on a hundred different issues.

For it or against it,

With us or against us.

With all-too-few a grey,

Although the world is a thousand thoughts,

and a thousand different colours.