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?