Walks in the park have felt a bit like walks in the prison yard during this time of confinement to quarters.

Masked, we keep our distance. In this silent passing each other, a heightened awareness of each other’s eyes – inquiring, preoccupied; occasionally a fleeting recognition of commonality – sensed but never articulated.

There’s something, in times like these, about being a New Yorker. Though quite different, 9/11 was the last time it felt like this – a silent but deeply felt awakening of ‘we’.

Heightened vulnerability generates a strange paradox of distance and closeness between us. Like life and death: distinct but inseparable. As things seem to ‘get back to normal’, we can easily forget moments of this special intimacy between us – a wake up call to the deepest roots of our common humanity.

There is a strange kind of hope in the allowance of this realization. Hope that keeps fear from racing into panic; hope that keeps us reaching out and connecting; hope sustaining a smile of recognition between strangers.

Such hope is a gift of one’s found circumstance; a fortunate opportunity experienced in the caprice of possibilities in relation.

It’s there to sustain us when the free play of circumstance threatens to break us.

***

flower smile

indifferent to all

save  bees’

nectar needs

sex play

of

seasons’ circumstance

sets my mood

for a return smile

to a passing stranger’s

eyes

2020 James Donnelly, DSW.LCSW

All rights reserved

South Garden Press, New York