Stranger
I talked to a stranger last Monday
someone who crossed my path that day
someone who I may have known before though in a different place
he may have had a different name, different face
but he had the same sad eyes, the same smell of cheap stale wine
dressed in dirty ragged clothes worn by time and drudgery
there in the shadows of so many, many years before
long nights when time passed more slowly
and mornings dawning was oh so slow to come
I had met him there along the railroad lines
those ribbons of steel leading on to who knows where
I have met him in the back alleys of any given town
lying there in the shadows huddled against life’s miseries
a mind awash with dreadful distant memories
of life’s failures and horrors; those remnants of some foreign war
memories that leave him restless; adrift; unable to settle
with a need to constantly keep moving on
his mind now numbed by drugs or drink that at times
leaves him sprawled against some darkened door
I may have known him then; way back before this time
You may also have known him then
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