- in public we are all adrift
- like big, lazy catfish
- feeding the mind sense impressions
- from the great Missouri of life.
- yet on the bus the verbal rambler sits next to me,
- tells me of Jesus, a cross baby
- I’d better believe.
- I tell him, “I believe the duty of all believers is to cast doubt.”
- I say, “religious brother,
- I’ve taken my rebirth into my own hands.
- you’ve done your job. say no more.”
- and all the while I’m thinking: please God, let the bored bore the boring.
- gazing out windows, who doesn’t
- mentally push people and buildings out of the way
- to catch sight of the ocean, a mountain, the plain?
- vertical we try to look beyond the horizon of our circumstances.
- we look out longing
- for some vista more grand than we.
- and these sojourners on the bus,
- each one made from the same particles as God, even the lice,
- all here just trying to catch a lift,
- absorb what’s left of the light
- before going home.