A moment

I take a long walk today
on a brick path along a street, busy with early evening errands:
mothers walk children home from school,
fathers pick up cigarettes on their way home from the office,
grandmothers usher diaperless toddlers in split pants, bare baby butts abound.
This is my new home called China,
where silent electric scooters fill the streets,
except for all this honking -
a defensive measure against swervitude -
and fruit vendors hack up pineapples
with tiny machetes
into intricate, alluring designs.
There is a slight breeze as the sun inches toward the horizon
and the evening is cooling. I am walking
into the breeze, into the sun
and I can't help but smile to myself,
to everyone passing by.

"All we have is now."
To hear these words is one thing,
to say these words is another,
but to know the truth of these words at the core
is something else
that melts away yesterday and tomorrow
as if they have never, will never
be.

A woman walks by with her tiny dog.
A mother walks by with her tiny child.
And all of us realize, in this moment of smiles and laughter,
that cutie-wootie-patootie noises are vibrations
fused to our DNA.

A poetry prompt from Theme Thursday