Sometimes you see one in traffic,
a Samaritan in a Mazda parting
the sea of angry commuters
so you can finally get in.
Sometimes it’s a guy in the street
who gets a hundred bucks
and immediately spends it on a feast
for other homeless people around him.
Sometimes it’s a dog who sobs
and leaps with joy
when his owner returns
from hospital or war.
Sometimes they pop up, bobbers
on the murky stream of your day:
a smile in a hallway, a genuine question,
“How are you, really?”
Some disciples hide in words,
in gratitude, in every thank you said
but also in the middle finger
of the pissed off driver behind you now,
the one behind the guy that waved you in.
We can hear them in all the voices
that criticize and approve
every failure and win. The rub: we
are their witnesses. Our job: to recognize them.
How we react is just a stone cast into a pond,
an addend in an ongoing equation in signs.
Maybe our responses are disciples too;
watch them ripple and roll over time, trying
to gain momentum, trying to sculpt our shoreline.
Monique Gagnon German is a graduate of Northeastern and Northern Arizona Universities. She is a wife, mother, a former Copy Editor of Ragazine(www.ragazine.cc), and former Technical Writer for a laser manufacturer in San Diego, CA. Currently, Monique works as a Content Developer and document QA Specialist for a small veteran owned company in TX while continuing to write poetry and stories in CO. Her poems have appeared in over 30 journals/anthologies including Rosebud, California Quarterly, Tampa Review, Off the Coast, and The Wayfarer. Her micro-flash, flash, and short stories have been featured in Kalliope, A Journal of Women’s Literature & Art, The MacGuffin, and Adelaide Literary Review. In October 2017, she was nominated for a Pushcart Prize for poetry so she is actively crossing her fingers as you read this. Website for Monique: http://www.moniquegagnongerman-com.webs.com/
Photograph by Ikiwaner, Lausen, Gombe Stream National Park
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