"First Steps" - Dallas Clayton

Cast open your windows

and look out into the world.

Throw open your doors -

those neighbors are your neighbors.

Those people are your people

waiting to have questions asked

and answered,

waiting to be found out, 

and turned upside down,

and impressed.

Waiting for you,

waiting alone

behind shuttered windows.

I read this poem tonight on Dallas Clayton's blog, and it impressed me.  Because we just moved, J and I don't know anyone yet.  Sometimes when I'm home, I see headlights or the flash of the sun on a car driving by, and I secretly hope it's a neighbor bringing us cookies or welcoming us to the neighborhood.  Then my mind asks, "If someone was going to come, why would they wait two months?" and the car always passes by.  Then today I read that poem.  This is what it said to me:

You're waiting in your home for someone to come meet you.

You're waiting for someone to care,

to ask you about you,

and to let you tell them.

You clean the house so you can invite someone over

"someday"

Or so the person who knocks will see a clean living room when you open the door.

Across the street,

she's waiting in her home for someone to come meet her.

She's waiting for someone to care,

to ask her about her,

and to let her tell.

She cleans the house so she can invite someone over

"someday"

Or so the person who comes will see a clean living room when she opens the door.

So "cast open your windows

and look out into the world.

Throw open your doors - 

those neighbors are your neighbors.

Those people are your people...

Waiting for you..."

And they need a friend, too.