It’s always the strangers that do the most damage.
The ones you never get to know.
                Seen in passing cars
                                     mirrored in windows
and remembered

                                        And the others—
the ones who promise everything, then go away.

Sometimes I think people were meant to be strangers.
Not to get to know one another,
not to get close enough to damage the heart
made older by each new encounter.

But then,
someone comes along
and changes all that.
For a while anyway.

Still, as the years go by
it’s easier to remember
the streets where it happened
                           than the names
and who was the one on Channing Way.