Time Zones

Right at this minute, as I sip my coffee
And mull over what to write:

Someone tiny and wriggly is being
Pushed out into the world
To change it forever someday,
To never leave it the same again.

Someone hooded is being executed
In some godforsaken part of the world
For some crime too heinous
for the showing of faces.

Someone with a big smile on is kissing
A newly-wedded spouse, a merger of
White dresses and black tie suits,
A 'hello' they hope will continue 'til the last breath.

Someone with bitter lips
Is kissing a new-forged stranger
Goodbye, Forever,
As if there truly were a forever.

Right at this minute, as I walk to work
With my pack slung casually over my back:

A young mother is weeping
On the other side of the world
Over the white-shrouded body
Of a child killed by a rain of bullets.

A little girl with flushed cheeks and skewed pigtails
Is pumping a battered blue playground swing
Higher and higher and pretending to fly,
Puckering her bow lips to kiss the wings of angels.

An old man is walking his dog
Even if he cannot remember what he last ate,
Where he lives, where he is or what name
He gave the arthritic mutt lumbering at his side.

A grandmother is pulling a fresh-baked cake
Out of the oven and shooing the little ones
Away to let the confection cool enough for celebrating
A birthday with formalwear of icing and candles.

Right at this minute as I am brushing my teeth:

Someone is having hot, sweaty, kinky sex;
Or weaving liquid fantasies about it;
Or proselytizing against it;
Or worrying about complications from it;
Or just doing it.

Someone is drinking a strong cup of java;
Or wanting to do it;
Or scolding someone else about it;
Or trying not to do it;
Or just standing outside a window smelling it.

Someone is dancing in the rain;
Or getting sick from it;
Or frowning upon it;
Or laughing at the people doing it;
Or remembering what it was like to do it.

Someone is eating a mango;
Or making someone else wish they were;
Or hoping they can someday;
Or recalling the feel of mango juice on the chin;
Or trying to forget the flavor of the mango.

Someone is painting a portrait
Of a world rotating from sunrise to sunrise
In a palette of skins and eye colors,
In a set of hair-color swatches,
In a mix-and-match pret-a-porter
Of genes and gene-sequences,
In a real-time stream of simultaneous voices,
In the ebb and flow of the human tide.

Right at this minute
Someone is thinking about me
Thinking about you
Thinking about all of these
Minutiae, making up stories
While people-watching
On the street
Where we barely,
If ever,
Meet.