Poems About Strangers

From Out of Nowhere

He's beside me
out of the thinnest of air
saying You've forgotten
your smile.  There -- reminded --
smiling once more.  He walks
in stride with me
as if we'd set off on this journey
together and he says he knows
I'm not from around here
because he can see I'm a free
spirit on hallowed Harvard ground.
He says if I like music than I like poetry
and he recites a verse he says he conjured
just for me in these moments together.
By the end, he's confessed his love
for me until an undying age and asks
if I love him, too.  Part of me does,
but the words are lost in the fading daylight
hours as we continue together
for blocks on end and he tells me
he's been to one hundred and twenty countries
and speaks fifteen fluent languages
but he's never traveled anywhere
with a beauty more exotic than mine.
My Midwestern self throws my head back
in laughter and even though it's surely
a line, I let it hook me, anyway.