Obliged To Unknown People

Our troubles, the burden of them,
are like polluted oxygen we must breathe
a few breaths away from death.
And then a woman gives me extra ice cream,
smiles knowingly at my eyes with their dark circles.
A man says hello in the early morning on the stairwell,
on his way to work or wherever he goes with such eager hope.
There is a pattern today, this charity stretching from sidewalks
to the Interstate, as rain cools the Redbud trees,
an old woman turns with bent hips and waves.
It’s always this way in these reassuring moments,
attentive and awake snatching me from my mind as
they were surely once tempted—
the allure of lying down in a purple field
of atrophy.