To the stranger

The stranger whom I did not see
who passed not but a day ago
who carries no regard for me:
a stranger too. I cannot know

your will-not-be’s or could-be loves;
the days you’ve spoke or smoked or sang.
I cannot know your words thereof;
how long or if you’ve clenched in pain.

who knows you true, I cannot tell.
I cannot see your daily fears
(those which you wake just to foretell),
or if your mind is ever clear

enough to see yourself as real
as I myself shall never do.
I wonder if you’ll ever feel
a gladness that was fit for you.

The world’s alive with us, and though
I know the stranger’s always there
I do not stop to see them, so
I don’t become fully aware

of equal insignificance
inside us all. And what a thought
it is to vision consciousness
that follows every stranger. Caught

in our own troubled lives and minds
(as every stranger’s born to be)
we lose that everyone’s alive
beyond our own mind’s registry.

Dear stranger, though I do not know
the fragments of your mind and all
its methods, or what you do show
to other strangers when you fall

or if you’re going very far
or every sight you’re soon to see
or why your dreams are what they are
or why they will or will not be

–please take this short acknowledgement.
It is for you, to know you’re there
and for the stranger audient
who lives a person’s life somewhere.