Transit

By Wesley Houp

The sky,
the earth,
the oceans,
the rivers.
This life
is full
of transit.
How much
does any
destination
need you?
More than
the place
you departed?

I drive 25 miles
to work.
Pass over
one river
and four creeks.
Three valleys
and the inward-
facing edge
of a highland
rim comprised
of heavily worn
Mississippian
limestone.
It took
these little
Cumberlandian
rivers
70 million years
to transport
enough material
to get us here,
base-leveling,
the basement
of Ordovician
under the ghost
of a Pliocene dome.

I pass through
a forest
of red cedar.

I can’t take
it all in.
Not in a lifetime.

I know
deer gather
in a certain
soybean field
at dawn.
There’s the bleached
spine of an
American elm
where vultures
dry dew from
their wings.
A tree the
bobcats like
to sniff
for who?
and where?
Too much
to learn
in a handful
of miles.

Planes full
of people
come out
of cruising orbit
over my house
every hour.
What have
they learned
on their great
ramblings across
the sky?
The earth?
The oceans
and rivers?
Perhaps an
ocean of useful
information.

But I like not
going far,
and I like a
little place
to keep on
knowing,
a tree to lean
on and ask
everything
and expect
nothing.