Somewhere in Manhattan
by Robert K. Johnson
On a soundless midnight street
undisturbed by fast taxis
or sidewalk passersby
except for me,
I see a thin black man,
not young, not old, who stands
at one end of a block and watches
the flight of his white Frisbee,
glimpsed in the light from a few streetlamps,
till it glides down at the block’s far end.
Pleased, he ambles down the street
and picks up the Frisbee
while I wait for him to disappear
into the next block.
But I’m wrong.
Still oblivious to the people
housed in buildings all around him,
he throws the Frisbee
back to where he first stood;
then begins his game again.
And I stay,
held fast by his private world
that is so like my private world.
Copyright © 2019 by Robert K. Johnson.