“We Before Me … “

Hello friends. Life’s lessons can be found anywhere, even in a busy, after-school McDonald’s. Here, for example, is a poem about a girl’s jacket with the instruction to live “we before me,” an excellent ideal worth striving for. As I looked around and saw others engaged in their own everyday pursuits, I realized for this one brief time at least we were all “living in ease and freedom,” as Thich Nhat Hanh wrote. Our various cares and strivings were put aside in a communal moment. Would that such moments would be more universal. Best, Gene.

“We Before Me . . . ”

reads in gold on the black jacket
of an African-American teen girl
in a local McDonald’s where I attempt poems.

Does she know she’s a walking Buddha
signboard, just released from school
to enjoy friends, fries, and favorite sweets?

Four white boys nearby ignore them,
with a less-secure swagger about themselves
moving through acne to being liked,

while a gray-bearded black elder
long graduated from striving
smiles a message: the boys will get over it,

and come to know with Thich Nhat Hanh
that “happiness is living in ease and freedom,
experiencing life’s wonders in the present,”

rather than blind themselves with pursuing
fame and amassing wealth
as true success for capitalist heroes.

Some even from youth realize this,
and wear the desire for wider love
written in three words on their backs.