Talking to Tim

People who don't think like I think
              are what I've been thinking about.
I hope you know some who see the world through a very different lens than you do
                            They will make you think.

I have fears too,
     seems to me those who share the views of my friend Tim are burdened by their fears in a different way, they feel they are playing for keeps even more than I do;
          they seem terrified/calm
They nurture themselves with the soft feel of gunmetal and see the Second Amendment as a framed portrait unable to fade or be re-framed when the paper yellows and the print blurs,
                   1790 never felt so right,

Tim is sensitive to education, his lack and my surfeit,
                              his lack and the mountains of college walls,

His school is "Hard Knocks" only the knocks may not have been as hard as he likes to think. He forgets some of the choices he's made, I suspect.  He can't grasp the privilege for more than a passing minute, a remote nod across an open field in a rainstorm,
                       Like many, he's constructed an echo chamber in which to pitch his tent.
               He scares me, on occasion; his lack of empathy makes me highly uncomfortable,
I feel my sweat roll down my body when his racism and xenophobia surface.
             I can only live my life.  I can only live my ideas.  But when I choose words carefully, choose music and art, and friends, and books; when I am mindful of how I interact with people and am conscious of my smiles,
                                            I realize that I am talking to Tim
                                               Now to make him hear me.