We gather at the bus stop
like leaves herded by the wind’s whim –
an old man on crutches,
the hairdresser from Coiffeur Latino
who dishes out gossip and hands out
café con leche as she washes, blows and dries,
the reed thin man who does “this and that”
to scrape by. A few youngsters, earphones clamped
on their skulls, shut the world out.
The faces are familiar yet unknown.
We acknowledge each other in silence.
Greetings are stuck in our throats.
We size each other up, decode dress,
skin color, gesture and mother tongue.
We are thrown together in this quarter
of cheap flats where news headlines hang
like an odor wherever we go.
Defensive of our turf, we wonder if the man
across the street really did stab his daughter
twenty times? Did the refugee next door
plunge from the fifth floor
under suspicious circumstances?
Street festivals, in summer,
bring out nations to eat falafel,
spring rolls and curry.
People burst out of their cocoons
after a few beers,
turn into butterflies,
take wing in the unity of exclusion.
©2005 Althea Mark-Romeo
Revised 2009
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