An Answer To A Window Gazer

After noticing signs of a habit put aside
I posed a question to myself—a window gazer
The question stayed in my rough-draft notebook
A year or two later, I wrote it as a poem
My daughter who is favored by the muses
And is the best reader a father could ask for
Read my “Question for a Window Gazer”
Then she looked up in surprise and said,
“Dad, I heard a conversation in a coffee shop
I think it had something to do with your poem! “
One day my daughter sat in that independent café
Once mentioned in the New York Times
As one of those “third places” in our city
A space for neighborhood and community
And rival to the sign of the “Green Mermaid®”
Two ladies met and sat at the neighboring table
One removed a cap, let down her long chestnut curls
Looked straight at her friend and spoke for a long time:
“Thank you for meeting me here, this is a sad day
In a few minutes I’ll go to my husband’s shop nearby
Today I will begin my first course of chemotherapy
He wants to be the one to cut my hair
He doesn’t want to see it fall out in patches.”
My daughter did not eavesdrop on purpose
But this story was delivered to her sympathetic ear
It tells me how someone’s dream was interrupted
We hold onto dreams by filaments as fine as hairs
When it comes time for wielding scissor blades
May we never turn them against anyone else
May we take care of our own