stacking stones / talking to Samuel

It is not, so much,
the loss of coffee with friends,
or family visits,
that is isolating.
Rather it is the loss of chance encounters,
a conversation with someone stacking stones –
that unexpected realisation of another’s humanity,
that reminds us of our own.

Prompted by the dVerse quadrille “throwing poem stones” prompt, although I have been thinking about stacking stones a bit lately.  The second thing I ever posted on this blog, and the first “poem” I wrote after many years, was Talking to Samuel/stacking stones. I say “poem”, because it’s really just a record of a conversation with a homeless man stacking stones, as accurately as I could jot it down afterwards.  

I don’t think I am feeling isolated due to covid. But I think I am feeling a lack of humanity – my own and other people’s. Ren Powell talked about compassion fatigue in one of her posts ( I can’t find it again now  😦 ) – that we need to think of people suffering misfortune as not like us, as “other”, so that we can feel safe.

And as the relentless barrage of news continues, so gradually we shrink our circle of firelight, and more and more people become “other” to us. My circle of firelight seems very small at the moment. 

With masks, and distancing, and staying at home, we lose the chance encounters where we talk to a stranger – with no agenda, no expectations – and are simply one human talking to another. And recognising that they are not “other”, that they, and we, are both just human. 

I am in no hurry to leave the mask behind, or go out unnecessarily. But I would dearly love to sit and talk to a stranger stacking stones again soon.