That sudden view, of change

Thanks to Elizabeth Gordon for a second thought on my day yesterday which got me thinking and got this first draft down today.

Today at work there were many visitors
from different stores and offices loaned
working side by side with us as we worked
doing our normal work things but
in this sea of many just like us but
not us at all, just as we in our place
were not them, not their co-workers
not their normal day to day view of the world.
Because there were so many of us there
to share the usual day of work
there was, at least for me, this moment
to consider my place in this swirl
of people I knew and those I didn’t.
I had one advantage since I knew those
who’d come outside their normal commute
while they did not know the home team
until introduced and chatted up.
It was a little like a party, a wedding,
or a funeral perhaps, where people join
for a few hours or a day, for one goal,
to sit all facing the same way awhile
and then drive off in different directions.
Or maybe, what I, being older, recognize
as my normal everywhere world, ever turning
ever bringing some forward, gradually
morphing into something so slightly changed
that it takes that moment to focus and
looking around realize with a start
oh, that person’s gone now, and won’t return.
the younger getting older and
the landscape growing stranger and darker
this chair, once his, now hers.
this child, now tall and mother
this set of scenery that holds me now
with others in the wings, waiting to go on.