In Passing by Albert Huffstickler

In Passing
by Albert Huffstickler
1927-2002


There's a way people come to know each other
without ever speaking -
like on a bus at night
or in an apartment house over the years,
passing each other in the hall,
meeting at the mail box;
eating in the same diner at opposite ends of the room,
passing in the street year after year
on the way to work or on the way home.
In the silence of the night sometimes,
faces come to us in the darkness -
the faces of people we have known
but never spoken to.
And in the night, these faces glow
with a gentle light
and they're like the faces of angels
descended from some high place
to tell us it's all right,
that the loneliness will end,
that somewhere in a place not known to us yet,
we're together and always have been.