Fire Upon The Platform

What propels a woman

bent by decades of neglect and scorn,

years of unbearable debt,

refractory children grown up,

to get suddenly lit by love

for a stranger who, upon a busy platform,

met her with a half-smile of despondency?

She resolutely departs with him ,

all the uncertainty over her head.

Was it she or he who discovered ,at the appointed hour,

the primal fire  burning quietly upon the  platform?