Stranger
       

The man emerged from a Starbucks
on a mission with moon-landing steps
and a boom box blasting Foreigner,
a table of businessmen foot tapping
to I Want to Know What Love Is.
Dude rocked a mustache, orange
vest with no undershirt, skinny
jeans, flip flops, a vision of past
fashion failures or an apocalyptic
future. He cradled a rectangular
slab of gray metal in his other arm
that could have been the fuel
cell to his space ship, offspring
of a departed cyborg companion,
the missing item from every piece
of Ikea furniture, the thing surely
out of place on a man out of time.
His destination was not my place,
but the wake was felt from the top
floor to those in utero. The song
vibrated in the office park, rattled
windows and passersby, Pied Piper
in reverse, the parting of possibilities.
Maybe we're all singing to ourselves,
castaways on a voyage we dare not,
trapped in a past of our construction,
unreachable in the lunchtime bustle.

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Copyright © 2018 Martin Ott All rights reserved
from Lessons In Camouflage
C&R Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission