elderly man
clinging
wild-eyed blue
to life
looking up
at me standing up
fast from the seat
beside him
telling his less-
panicked wife more
alive here you can
have my seat and
moved one row up
beside a young man
and his sister glancing
over as the old lady
says loudly to her
silent wide-eyed
partner somebody
did a real nice thing
for us don't you think?
as i pretended
not to hear thinking
about my dad
and me

it's been a long time
since i left the trees
to land in a large room
packed full of people

so easy to love and hate
looking through a screen
but in the flesh when you
see the burdens of their
bodies being heft about
with their incidental lives
held in skulls loving and
hating becomes impossible

almost forgotten philia 
for all we share so obvious
in each face knowing we are
seen and in that where words
never suffice, acknowledged
as separate, shared and
somehow understood between
strangers perhaps the deepest
form of the most quiet love

i look for sounds, long
slow and drawn out like
tendrils spread through
all i can see without
allowing Me to overshadow
what might be holding me
aloft or cohered into
a sound perhaps of myself
tied to letters, droplets
falling in a corner ground
with a hopefully rising
scent to cause a passerby
  pause in remembering
  our collective weight
  only for a moment
for your sake and mine
  paradoxically
because we have so many
ways through the fields
and far along still to go

only a couple days left
and i will be a person
again with an identity
nobody can dispute which
comes with paper print
and pictures, secret
seals and certain patterns

unfortunately this means
i must be at a space/time
specific coordinate which
basically means leaving
the trees for packed people
in office lights carrying
correct information and
a fee to be recognized
as me