People

WE gather and we part. In any one place strangers are yapping away or keeping silent in lonely solitude, all just inches apart but somehow worlds as well. Sometimes we pass so close to these 'other people' it amazes me we can still keep to ourselves, maybe passing a rude but whispered criticism, maybe theorizing tragic life stories of the lone ones, maybe averting eyes from the occasional person who comes around with extended and cupped hands and a mouthful of foreign but unmistakeably pleading words - or using an old walking stick to skilfully yank open a drain cover upon the tantalising sight of an abandoned rusty coin lazing contentedly within its dirty belly - but no matter what, never reaching out.