Out the window of a bus I witness a small drama,
a man and his mother sit at a sidewalk café.
His eyes are smeared with tears and smoke.
She crushes her burnt cigarette and
gestures for her son to come closer.
He scoots his chair toward her, leans in,
drapes his arm around her scarf encumbered neck,
lays his head on her shoulder, his shoulders heaving.
I wonder, what is the source of his sadness?
Is she moving far away from the city?
Is she dying? Is he dying? Can she console him?
Can her maternal poise soothe his unmanly grief?
She reaches up to tender-pat his hand,
a mother’s comfort sometimes needed in our world.
Realizing this is no way for a man to behave in public,
he 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 splendid sights,
the Sacre-Coeur, Notre Dame, Napoleon’s Tomb, the Louvre.
Yet, I am not moved to write about
these monuments to l’hommes and Dieu,
but note instead one minute-seven seconds
of the lives of two humans bound by birth and love.
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This poem was begun on October 2016 and written and rewritten
little by little over the next four years. Today I decided it was ready.