Your Friends & Neighbors

On a trans-Canadian highway a bus makes its way.

Inside, a strange man, a stranger, turns to his neighbor,

sleeping, and wordlessly starts sawing away.

The passengers, dazed, remain rooted in their seats.

By the time the bus pulls over, his work is done

and he holds up his handiwork for all to see

the faces of two men not previously known

to them, or to each other:

Strangers no more.

 

Despite the presence

of so many high school classmates

on the latest social networking site,

only two of them have friended me

(and both of them boys).

Despite my cleverly lit photo and obvious success,

witty quotes and enviable downloads,

a quarter-century later, I still find myself wondering

how this could be.

 

And the people on the bus–are they back to watching

Two and a Half Men and worrying about their bills?

Bonded by this bus beheading,

do they stay in touch on Facebook,

linked in perpetuity by a

religious zealot with a serrated knife,

singled out on a chosen Greyhound

and shocked back to life?

 

Middle age: the slow sweet decline

of a life minimally realized.

Not violent, not unexpected.

Just an even, unrelenting creep.

Not like death—of a baby or your child

or at the hands of a (random?)

watchman

while you sleep.

 

And what of the connections

absent a laying on of hands?

Groups of common interests abound,

no one ever need feel alone—yet

does a thing in the world exist

more intimate, more tender,

than a piercing of the

flesh? 

 

 

 

I am currently the Director of Communications at Sierra Nevada College in Incline Village, Nevada. Previously I was a project editor at the University of Nevada Press. Since graduating from California State University, Chico, with a B.A. in English (focus on creative writing), I’ve worked in publishing as a production editor, freelance project manager, and copy editor.