Strange how you walk
into a room and come out
not the person
that you were
before you innocently
entered through the door

I think of Simon Peter
a simple fisherman encountering
as if by chance a man
whose face
whose words revealed
love's hidden possibilities
a man you couldn't walk
away from couldn't simply
turn around and go back
to the life you'd known before

Love can do that to us
and so can truth when we
encounter it in unexpected
places finding something
in ourselves or in another
something that we never
once imagined never thought
to look for but that shakes us
to our very core

I saw this once
a woman in a line
waiting to meet
the Dalai Lama
she was smiling
full of happy expectation
confident of what awaited her
and then her turn came up
and such surprise such wonder
and astonishment showed in her face
I knew she'd caught a glimpse
of something real
something to carry her
across the river
even to the farther shore