PARK BENCH

All my life I have had the fortunate habit of staring. I am fascinated by the way people interact, how they dress, what their mannerisms are, their eclectic personalities, and how intrinsically different and yet the same we all are. Do some staring today and see what you can learn about yourself and the person you are staring at.

The writer should never be ashamed of staring. There is nothing that does not require his attention. Flannery O'Connor

Park Bench

On a dedicated park bench
I watched a man just stare,
Staring into the air,
staring into colored leaves
memorizing something unseen,
staring around the barren branches,
staring into moving water,
where the fallen leaf once was
floating. He was staring.

Today I found my self
on a cement step staring.
Not at the trees or
their magnificent colored leaves,
not the brown brittle oak leaf
shaking like an aged hand
falling quietly to its end,
not at the creek that effortlessly
flows. I was staring.

I was staring inside myself
Watching my heart beat,
With my staring eyes open
feeling the coarse of my hair,
I was staring inside my being
Asking it for answers to questions
that I hoped age would answer.
I was staring at my tattered soul
wondering what went wrong
And what I think I found out is
we all stare.

I was staring like people I watched,
and realized we all have questions,
we all have sadness and loneliness,
or a broken heart that is bleeding
staring brings silence in solace,
sometimes tears running like rivers
or colors of unwanted choices or
a moment of discarded emptiness.
We all were sitting and staring
waiting for our answers.