Highway to Katowice, Nov. 2009

Double-decker bus:
we're stacked above what moves through this world
as small, as significant
in the ways of ants,
the ways of industriousness,

and here that industry is: landscape
of provincial Poland, strips of green farm, billows
of smoke topping red brick
and gray shingle rooves,

below us (for we've chosen to ride on top,
to climb as high as we're allowed),
a thousand cars, a thousand
drivers aimed towards the setting sun, ablaze
to the left and slightly ahead.

Theirs are impatient faces, heads tilted to one side,
hands on the wheel straying from ten-and-two,
listing counterclockwise
while they speed past, and we in our perch,
all of us longing,

this collective of gravid, vehicular beings,
stranded, and then we see them: three jet contrails,
pure white against Katowice's hazy sky, meeting just above
the topmost curve of that orange, orange

sun and we all strain and silently plead with them
to do what we cannot,
to keep climbing and climbing,
and we beg them against a backdrop of bright light,
of old pine,

to bring us the knowledge
that someone, some man has burst from this earth,
and refused to come back, has done his level best

to bring us all as high as we're wishing for,
as high as we can ever get.