South Town Park Poem
Sometimes I catch people staring at me.
Sometimes they catch me staring at them.
I’m a foreigner in this country.
Strange people seem so beautiful
to those who can see beauty.
I saw a gray old man sitting on a bench
here at a park square near the university.
Some triviality on my phone hypnotized me.
When I looked up there was another old man.
He was not so different from the first old man.
They wore different colored jackets, one blue,
the other beige, but both wore a kind of hat
retired men wear to linger briefly in the park.
Almost indistinguishable old men can not sit
for long, because they are ashamed to be idle.
This inability to relax is the curse of working people.
Young people waste their hours joyfully here.
The university boys smoke cigarettes and discuss God knows what in Turkish or Arabic
or even English. The old men sit, look around, blink at the birds
that sing in the late winter sun; they rub their eyes.
Spring will come, inshallah , but not for everyone. Sometimes a winter freezes an old heart so cold and numb no song or smile can thaw it. Some old men blink, and walk away, head down.
I can still look at the birds, and the foolish old man talking to an old widow in a floral hijab, making a friend.
I can sense the energy of spring prophesied in graffiti
scrawled in Latin and Arabic alphabets on walls.
Sometimes I know I was born for display and observation.
Sometimes my appointment to witness the world is plain.
I am a native of this universe, my heart hot with blood and passion,
and mercy for all the refugees passing through this life, alienated.