Bus Thoughts

a poem

I have been told that
	being in the grandeur of nature
	is to see the sacred.

I have no doubt that it is possible
	for those who have told me this.

Yet, if I have a hint of cynicism
	it may just be my own poor vision
	(or history, or inclination).

Or, it may be that I think we are just there 
	as tourists,
Looking for what we want to find
	immersed in the midst of beauty 
	we experience as
        overwhelming.

But we are always visitors there
in those realms of creatures
	who can see and smell and touch and intuit
	joys, struggles, fears, births, deaths
	we only imagine
        – if we even perceive their existence at all.

I will always be a visitor in their places
        - just someone passing through.  
	My home is elsewhere

If I really want to find the intense reality of holiness
	I just look to the face of the little boy who stands 
        on the seat in front of me with his mother 
	as he turns to look at me.
	I smile at him.  
	He’s shocked at being seen,
	Then he grins and quickly looks somewhere else.

I can hear sacred sounds in the voices of the two women
	sitting a couple of rows behind me.
	They are speaking words in a language I don’t understand
	but it is in the clear accent of my grandmother.
	And for just a moment, I’m sitting under a 
        delicious cherry tree on a warm Michigan afternoon
	with her and other long-dead aunts and uncles. 

A handful of teenagers is sitting across the aisle
	and they are talking too loud for me to hear the 
	recorded sounds of the voice telling me the next stop.
	They’re sharing a story with each other that 
        I’ll remember long after they’ve forgotten it.
	They’re annoying and exuberant energy gives me hope
	that when I am gone, something will still flourish.

It will be alright for those of us who ride together.
	the quiet ones, the ones who tell the old stories,
	even the ones who play music too loud because they haven’t yet 
	learned that the rest of us are here (they still have time).

We have been here together and we
	are all going to the same destination.