Zuccotti Park Rises Poem by Shirani Rajapakse

You watched from your window as they came in numbers
large enough to take over the world.
One by one they built a park of humanity.
I watched from my PC, my window to there – where you were.
Sitting snug in my room I watched the world play
out scene by scene on my screen.
Dressed in the colours of the day they camped outside
your window as you watched sipping your coffee or juice.
Or whatever. Crowds teaming from the four corners of the earth
merged and blended in a rainbow of perfect harmony.
The world’s a melting pot of ideas brimming over and spilling
across the globe. A single voice raised in unison, calling,
calling out and the winds carried the words over
miles of ocean and land to houses so distant, like mine.
Ripples of words, thoughts and dreams ran
the world as you watched from your window and I sat at my
desk and tapped on keys trying to make
sense of it all. Glass, steel, gleaming, reaching higher and higher
into the skies you looked out at trees of glass rising, rising,
splendid decadent, a world far removed from mine. While I tried
to imagine as I looked out the window here to see
trees, crotons in all hues like the many splendid hues of the people
camping out before your eyes. So close you could reach
out and touch. I was so far away. Many, many
miles away on another continent, another country, another
plane of consciousness yet just the same as you. A piece
of humanity yearning to spread my wings and fly.
I perched on my window sill and looked out at the myriad
colours of the leaves on the trees bending, whispering words from you
as you stared at the colours before you, fall shades
made bright by the colours of life. And as we watched from our
windows separated by time and space and distance
a new icon was born. Poets chanted, singers dreamed and politicians
ranted while the people of the world united in perfect accord.