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BUS RIDE TO TOWN ©By Russ





Another bus ride into town, an hour long trip, passengers trying for a little more sleep before starting class, or work. And I’m alone in watching each little thing that we pass. Tractors driving slow, one tire on the highway, the other on the shoulder of the road, heading out for a dusty day's work. Orchards of plum trees, once profitable, but not now, stand patiently in tangled neglect. Soon to be uprooted by machines and replaced by a fashionable wine grape. An old barn nearly covered in moss, flashes a peace sign as it has for the past 30 years. Old iron boilers of riveted steel rust quietly in the fields, long time companions to the blackberry vines. Dairies no longer environmentally correct are being razed for housing tracts. Egrets on stilts walk silently through murky waters in search a meal. New Wineries and fancy shops pop up like that clown in the wind up box, suprising me for a moment, but the joke is really on them. Soon they, too, will be in waiting patiently in tangled neglect, for the next profitable wave to carry them out in its wake. Already my ride is over and I walk to the church, wondering how a person with my past has a key to every door. An old lady walks up to me, (at the end of her morning mass) while I set up for the AIDS program, in our rented space. She stops in front of me, leans forward over her cane, and looks full into my face. “You frightened everyone when you first arrived here. I can’t believe how much you have changed.” “I love you,” she said. “Do you find that hard to believe? ” and she offered her face up for a kiss. “Not any more”, was all I could think to say, and I turned uncomfortably back to my work, thinking hard about something I’d just read. Something about ‘the stone that the builder rejected, becoming the cornerstone of the temple.’ >And wondering how that might apply to me. Russ...7-17-98







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