We are all here on this earth
for only one go around.
And everyone thinks their purpose
is to just find their passion.
But perhaps our purpose
is to find what other people need.
--Meg Wolitzer
It was the boy at baggage claim who started it.
His elation! Each time a new bag would drop,
he would point at the suitcase and squeal,
then turn to his grandmother with incandescent delight.
His grandmother deepened my joy. How she beamed
at her grandson, praised him in Spanish, her words
a bright blur I interpreted more through hunch
than through certainty. And sooner than you’d think,
I fell in love with every single person at baggage claim sixteen.
Didn’t need to know their stories to know
they were worthy of love. Every one a grandchild.
Every one a light. It was like, how on these midsummer
nights, the late sun shines long though the cities and fields
and everything, everything is beautiful.
Oh, people of Iran. Israel. Palestine. Ukraine.
Russia. Somalia. Yemen. Maine. I will never know you,
yet I honor how you carry inside you your own strange
and beautiful spark. How each of you, too, is a grandchild.
Each of you, too, longs to belong. No matter what our leaders do,
the light is right to see how much, you, too, long to be safe,
to be seen, to be kind, to be loved, to be trusted, to be home.
—Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer,
The Night I Fell in Love with the Whole World
Image source: Toddler sprints into his grandmother’s arms at the airport, https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/humankind/2024/10/04/full-speed-ahead-watch-toddler-sprint-through-airport-to-see-his-grandma/75515681007/
Poem source
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