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On The Border
by Chris Sorrenti
Coming through in waves: cars - hundreds...maybe thousands;
workers from the Outaouais...Québec.
I eye each one through bus window;
me also heading to work - the opposite direction.
Red light stops us on Portage bridge, Ottawa/Hull...the border.
No talk of Separation here, as eavesdropping, I can hear conversation.
Electronics unnecessary. Imagination cutting through language barrier;
translated to a common tone. Each face - a moment...anecdote.
Hopes, fears...none too different from mine - fellow Ottawans -
hundreds...maybe thousands crossing each day with me.
Light turns green; disengage.
Bus lurching forward, and I've penetrated a border visible only on a map.
But farther still, separatists are working also,
designing passports that won't look like passports,
and traffic lights that may not turn green.
The signs are up; some only in English, others French,
though one doesn't need a second language to understand what it all means.
Last wave of Quebecers disappears behind.
A fellow passenger, blind to my vision, wonders aloud:
"Where does Ottawa find room to park all those cars?"
Puzzling him further, I respond, "A poet is given his daily bread."
© 1992
710 hits as of March 2024
09/06/2017 Posted on 09/06/2017
Copyright © 2024 Chris Sorrenti
| Member Comments on this Poem |
| Posted by Philip F De Pinto on 09/06/17 at 05:23 PM I love the poem, Chris. The lush fact of your looking back at your working life when all seemed to be in life's employ. What a joy! To have labored for such as sustained life. Love the line - each face a moment ..anecdote and the ending salvo, indeed to each bard is given his daily loaf, and still a horse can be led to water but not necessarily drink it. |
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