I carry an anthology in today’s everything bag.
I pull it out while waiting for the next thing:
coffee,
the nurse to call me in,
the bus to come,
the sky to fall.
Reading it exponentiates shared stories,
raising internal voices, outing me into
the crowd,
the transport,
the enshrined clouds.
I find myself glancing from page
to people, and back again.
I think how crowds
oblige me to gawk, wonder
what each person’s story is.
Absorbing each bark-sacrificed
to-be-told tale, bound together.
Tendrils remain pulling, calling
me to wander; to whom in the crowd
does this one (or that) belong?
We could each as easily be
the story-less face
in the crowd,
as the face-less story
on the page.
Such wrenching compassion grows from
the simple carrying of a poetic storybook
made from stolen bits of pulp. Remains
of a sapling’s elders, whose tears now dampen
the forest’s floor.
The well-seasoned writers’ gifts:
the inked feather in flight,
soaring from our condensations,
rooting us back to The unsoiled Home.
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