How do you do.

How do you do…

You mouth it back with a wooden smile…

Too careful not to open your mouth too wide

Too scared your tongue might just snap in half

The thunderbolt strikes your heart

Rhyming with their fading steps

You see it…

the dust left behind by their words…

Yes, how do you do

You wonder – ponder…

 And yearn to hear…

How do you do ‘it’?

How are you doing?

I see you but I have no time

I simply can’t stop

Then you hear their restlessness…

Here in the West, we all fear time…

But you and I – know, time does not exist

No one has ever seen time.

Even the pharaohs have no fear of time save for the pyramids

How do you do?

They hurry off chasing time.

And sometimes Chased by time

You hear your heart beating away their footsteps

Bleeding its way through your smiles

You ‘how do you do’, back

The wind carries it after the hurrying steps

Are their hearts too bleeding from unseen wounds?

How do you do. They hurry off again.

They never have time, yet they still try catching time

But the impossibility of such a task – trapping the invisible!

You nod for fear of opening your mouth

But your eyes refuse to acknowledge the breaking smile

For fear of letting loose those long overdue tear drops

Your heart knows that your eyes would bleed if you dared

Because the eye never forgets what the heart has seen.

How do you do!

B. Knight