Soapbox

From the Middle of the Bus

It was no grand event… perhaps
as quiet a moment as a president can ever have in public
but some things are in such perfect proportion that they simply have to be.
Some echos do not die out but grow louder on return
until, at the right moments
they ring like a bell.
Courage and truth spread roots,
lift branches, cast seeds to the wind
and the future grows.
My skin tingles at  the thought of him there,
living embodiment of the ripples spread from one small act.
Sliding quietly into the seat she took that day
in that same old bus smelling of  diesel and sweat,
of long days and hard looks
and the dry stone dust of walls suddenly cracked
though not quite ready to fall.

He looks out the same window where she once  turned her weary gaze
upon a world that seemed the same as  yesterday- but was not.
In a moment of quantum truth, the world was changing before her eyes
simply because she was sitting there
looking at it.
She was surrounded by angry people frightened of change
and she was just tired, maybe wasn’t trying to knock anything down
but she sat like thunder and woke the world.

And now here he sits, the circle completed,
the ripple returned to the source
the very change she wanted to see
through that soot-streaked window.
He is the echo that has become a new, ancient song,
looking out that window, now wiped museum-clean
yet still streaked with blood and resentment
wondering, perhaps, what  he may be changing
by some simple act at the end of a long day.
He is alone here, palpably so- yet no less surrounded
by angry people frightened of change,
and wondering how far his ripples will spread ,
peering forward,
hoping to catch a glimpse  of the change
he wants to be in the world.