Out the window of a bus, a small human drama,
a man and his mother sit at a sidewalk café.
His eyes are smeared with tears and smoke.
She crushes out her cigarette and
gestures for him to move closer.
He scoots his chair to hers,
drapes his arms around her scarf encumbered neck,
lays his head on her shoulder, his shoulders heaving.
She reaches up to tender pat his hand,
a mother’s comfort needed by a man.
Is she dying or moving, or is he?
Realizing this is no way for a man to behave in public,
he suddenly pulls back, straightens on his chair and
with a napkin wipes his eyes and sadly smiles.
I am a tourist in Paris, come to see the Sacre Cour,
Notre Dame, Napoleon’s Tomb, the Louvre.
Yet I am not called to write about
these monuments to hommes and Dieu
but this one minute twenty seven seconds
of two lives bound by birth and love.