The Poem I Found on a Park Bench
Someone left it there. I left one back.
I was running in the park the way I do every morning, the same route, the same bench, when I saw the poem. It was taped to the back of the bench, a single sheet of paper, typed, a poem about the way the light came through the trees in the morning.
It was not a good poem. It was a little sentimental and a little too fond of its own metaphor. But it was about the park, about the way the light came through the trees in the morning, about the sound the leaves made when the wind moved them. It was about the place I was running through, and it had been left there on purpose, for the next runner.
I read it twice. I stood there in the cold morning air and I read it twice, and I understood that the poem was not just about the park. It was a letter. It was the poet saying 'I was here too, and this is what I noticed, and now it is yours to notice'.
I wrote a poem back. I left it on the same bench, taped to the same place, for the next runner. I don't know if anyone will find it. I don't know if they will read it or keep it or add to it. But the bench is now a kind of library, a shelf of two poems about the same park, a conversation between two strangers who will never meet.
I still run past the bench every morning. The poem is still there. The light still does what it said it did. And the poem is still the thing that says 'I was here too, and this is what I noticed, and now it is yours to notice'.
By Team Writory, for Writory.
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