Serenity

In the darkening skies, 
pink and purple stretchy clouds. 
Boys sail loudly by on rumbling skateboards.  
Mature lovers cooing wooing at they
walk by hand in hand.  
Who am I here?  
Anonymous.  
Observer.  
Seen yet not seen.  
Sitting on a chair outside the deli at 
State and Fifth,
waiting for a friend,
Dissolving into the moment,
Blocks
magically, mystically, breaks up.  
Fear, anxiety subsiding.
The sky has faded into now solemn grey clouds.
I watch evening drift in from the east.


Wretching from the moment,
the fumes from an old truck fill the air, as it starts up 
and in agony, drives away, 
the ambiant peace painfully broken, 
with the stink of reality in its wake.
Then a car alarm goes off,
on and on and on
no owner in sight.
No one pays heed.
Passersby in their own worlds pay no notice.
On and on and on the horn blasts.


And calmly there I sit, detached,
earnestly working to maintain my serenity, my calm.
And this Satan's song, 
along with the cold darkness of early evening,
becomes background to my own experience.
I am not of it 
but am in it.
It is not me but it tries to haunt me, to rob me of dispassion.
This moment passes. 
My friend arrives
with his own reality, his own anxieties and fears and
I am present to it, but not absorbed by it.
It is just another challenge to the serenity I have found. 
but remembering I am in this world,
but not of it,
I am, simply, tranquilly, am.

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