So You Want Gossip: Conversations from a Central Park Bench

So you want gossip.

I have the destination for you. Plop down on a Central Park bench, and you might just have a man head over to you and ask if you consider yourself a poet. At least that was this stranger’s question for me last Saturday in the park. This is the gossip I live for. How do you see the world? What sparks your interest? What sets your heart ablaze? 

He crunched crispy tahini chickpeas and launched into his life story. Born at Mt. Sinai East, he returned there about 25 years later for medical school. He says he hopes to meet his maker there too. “I’ll leave this world where I entered it.” Such a morbid comment was said with such nonchalance. A sign of a life well-lived, maybe. Or a tired man. I couldn’t get a good read of it.

He said after years of stitching up patients, he was now breaking into the film industry with the help of his brother. Their film, released last December, made its rounds through about 30 small theaters and would have received the funding it needed to be pushed nationwide if his brother hadn’t had a stroke three weeks before the film’s release. No additional details. I was formulating my follow-up question, but he was onto the next topic.

His ex-wife died last week. He was down on the LES, while her one true love and her children were home at her side. His eyes saddened, and the crunching of his snacks stopped, he paused…then shook it off. 

He had dinner with his kids last week. It was nice. 

He commented on my freckles and that woman’s vibrant red shoes. 

“Look up at the trees.” The wind rustled through the leaves, soft footsteps grew louder and faded away, and the sweet scent of summer slowly settled in. The two men in their Pepper suits started strumming “Something.” “Listen,” he told me. “There’s just nothing like this.”

He pointed to who he says is a Parisian art dealer dressed down as a homeless man, pouring Josh straight into his flask. “He’s here every week. You should talk to him sometime.” And he asked me if I consider myself a poet. 

He notices things. He imagines things. He spins stories. He’s slowed down. 

Our conversation was casual, unconstrained, free-flowing. He punctuated his testimony, telling me to stop and to listen and to not worry about confirming the truth of these things, but to just feel them instead.

And he asked me if I consider myself to be a poet

To be a poet

To notice

To look at things

Differently?

In the same way but to write it down?

This man asks me if I consider myself a poet

And he’s just a stranger to me

But he’s a father to another 

And a brother to another 

And an ex-husband to a woman who’s just parted with the world

And he gives me his AOL

And this man asked me if I consider myself a poet

I had felt so disconnected from the world

I had too often had my head in the books

That when I finally looked up

It was this stranger

And he was asking me if I consider myself to be a poet

I had forgotten what it was to walk slowly and listen readily 

To notice and to feel and to note colors and facial expressions and the way the leaves rustle with 

the wind

Do I consider myself to be a poet?

Why try to label it?

Why not just notice, write, repeat?