Alive in Foreign Places

we move through these places like lightning; 
faces of 
masses of 
crowds 
of nameless strangers swiftly blurring by,
mosques and brown facade houses, shoulder to shoulder with white sheathed buildings;
home to the homeless kneeling 
in front of
the deathbed and resurrection point of hope.
scant skinny trees with a thirst in every joint
strange music from beyond the hanging sky.
i am pulled on by the need to move, to see a quieter place.
the brown hands of a child against my window,
and there, in brown-lilting soft eyes,
i find it,
for a moment.

—Renee Pollock

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