At the DMV

Twenty-two people standing
in line, a labyrinth of black web
from door over dull-tiled floor
eventually all the long way

to a—believe it!—friendly clerk.
It is a line made for patience,
for looking at the people around,
for reading standing, for wondering:

Why is that I, the only Anglo
in this line in the neighborhood
where I will have lived with my family
for fifty years in two weeks, why—

and I share in line a slowness
of natural migration to consider—
why, the company I am almost
keeping for some of a morning,

why standing here among this
disarmingly shaded assortment
of my fellow citizens, gives me
such a wonder of near euphoria?

Because, perhaps, enjoyment of
this space of morning, writing
those three brief stanzas, answers
the question I needn’t have posed?

Richard Fenton Sederstrom was raised and lives in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona and the North Woods of Minnesota. Sederstrom is the author of seven books of poetry, his newest book, Icarus Rising, Misadventures in Ascension, published by Jackpine Writers' Bloc, was released last winter. Read other articles by Richard Fenton.