FOR A STRANGER ON A TROLLEY ON A THURSDAY NEARING NOON

And who's this tourista bastard
Eyeing you like he knows you maybe?
Same way you're eyeing him
In between stints watching your little girls frolic
On a trolley headed downtown. Someone
You knew in school? A friend of a friend of a friend
Maybe?

I knew you in a previous life, a stranger time
Full of strange happenings, strange people:
One act plays and techies, preppies and hoods;
Fourth echelon, Third Regiment. We didn't march together.
Back when I couldn't possibly be who I grew up to be, and you
Were going to be someone else entirely. A lifetime ago,
When you wouldn't ever have looked at me.

You're my age, maybe a year older. We both show
The age, the mileage, maybe a little better than we might have expected.
We are well past the times when we might have shared
Aphorisms and truisms: "Things
Your parents tell you will fuck you up;" "The answer is twisting in the wind;"
"What if the Hokey Pokey really is what it's all about?"
Maybe we didn't grow up to be
The people our parents warned us about,
But we're no slouches either. I can tell by the smile
Behind your eyes, that's at least as curious
As it is nervous, that says so.
Even if you're not bold enough to ask my name, where I went to school,
Which lifetime you know me from, what dream I was in
Before I get off the trolley with my freckle-face niece
and dissappear into the crowd on Second Street
Just a face in the crowd, a half a block away,
A lifetime ago.