a personal journey

to know another

how can we ever know another?
what comes in that pair of eyes?
where mind and imagination go with that perception?
what the self within makes as the disparate becomes one?
how can we ever know another?

when others share pieces of that personal journey,
I marvel at the different paths that open up
and take me down them
as I leap into the alternative universes
that exist as surely as the one within which I live,
sometimes I just smile in wonder
at the coolness of a new perspective,
and, at other times, I feel pain and the tears come easy,

when I know the truth of another,
at least the truth that seems sure
by all the objective criteria I know,
the person herself, himself instead
can feel trouble well up within,
disturbance come toward them from without,

I wish they could see themselves as I see them,
and love themselves as I love them.

by Henry H. Walker,
May 25, ’11