The Eternal Cracks
Just outside Presbytarian Hospital the sidewalks are cracked.
A fact barely noticed in a city coming slowly undone.
Each section is still stable, sturdy. You can walk on them
with no worries of falling.
You were here years ago, visiting family,
And the same sidewalk held the same cracks.
You took a photograph. And today, you took another.
Not a whit of difference
between then and now. Never mind the rains since then,
the storms, the hundreds of thousands of feet
pounding obliiously on the concrete.
There is no change.
Oh to be so strong, that even broken,
you can be whole. I’ve never done so well,
but the irony is how few even notice
as they walk past
the eternal cracks.
About this poem
A meandering mind today, unable to fix on anything in particular. FIghting a cold. Losing. But still, I write.
I am often astonished, as I go through things, how few people notice. That is not a condemnation, just a fact. They do not notice when my life soars, and they do not notice when I am struggling. I have my mother to thank for that. “Never let them see you sweat.” she told me so often.
I wonder sometimes, if life would be different if we noticed more. If we saw relationships unraveling. If we saw people’s struggle in their work, or lack of it. If we saw the physical and emotional pain as we walked past our friends. Would things change? Or would they stay the same with no one acting in love to help.
I had a pastor, Brannan Thompson, who used to always say if we knew what the other person was going though, we’d be a lot kinder. There is truth in that.
Be well,
Tom
PS – the Picture really was taken outside Presbytarian Hospital in New York City. I really did take the same picture two years apart.
Quarry House 
Is it that people don’t notice or that they don’t want to get involved? Behind every facade there is another story, different problems. I worked in a service industry were we dealt with large groups of people and we tended to categorise them. The Boat people, for example were cruise passengers and so on. Some of those groups, many of those groups were demanding and they didn’t get much sympathy. When I looked at each person as an individual, I found they were not so different from myself. I learned not to generalise and to remember that everyone has a life we know nothing of. It does no harm to give the benefit of the doubt and to be nice. It’s not always that easy, of course, but it’s an ideal.
food for thought. Food for thought.