Happy, Free, Confused, and Lonely

You are stepping into a world
better fed than ever before,
where bicycles cost seven hours of work
instead of two hundred sixty,
where democracy blooms and slavery fades—

and also: the honeybees are dying,
the carbon has crossed four hundred,
the average American adult
reports having just one real friend.
Just one.

We have forgotten how to rescue each other
on a run-of-the-mill Monday,
though we remember at Sandy Hook,
at the Boston Marathon,
when the runners kept running to the blood bank.

Maybe greed is good,
but generosity is better.
Ruby Bridges, six years old,
crossing through crowds that jeered and threw things,
her lips moving: Please, God, try to forgive these people.

When scientists gave strangers unexpected money,
told them to choose spontaneously—
the majority gave it away.
Greed, it turns out, is a calculated afterthought.

Neil asked me after Senior Prom,
after dancing in a circle around the special needs students
who couldn't fit on the floor:
I felt so good. Do you think I was being selfish?

In close proximity, when people feel connected,
their heartbeats synchronize
with zero physical contact.
If I give you a smile,
that's not one less smile for me.

The homeless woman emptied her pockets,
held up a nickel:
I'd like to buy you something.
We stood in that beautiful, awkward silence,
then dropped it in the tip jar together.

Sometimes you're giving, sometimes receiving,
but the real reward lies in what flows between us—
not the value of what's exchanged,
but the connection, the rhythm,
the fact that we never stopped dancing.