Somewhere in the bowels of Queens with my crazy 2nd wife, <br />going to meet her grandpa. The insane traffic <br />last night, some kind of Puerto Rican parade, <br />and her brother who’d just found God in the car with us, <br />shouting out the window, “Jesus is Lord, baby! ” <br /> <br />Today sunny and quiet, the regular rhythm of the New York streets, <br />bagel and pizza shops, pedestrians, trees, subway entrances, and delis (the ones with those paper coffee cups that show a Roman discus-thrower) . <br /> <br />Parking, we walk up the stairs in an ordinary brown, brick building. <br />An old thin man with glasses sits in an easy chair, <br />a devout Catholic, Cindy’s told me. An hour we sit <br />and talk of practically nothing, the Yankees and St. Francis, <br />how he worked in the shipyards, went to church all his life. <br />A Presence slowly grows, beyond what’s said. <br /> <br />Walking to the car I turn, look back. <br />A tree sheds red and golden leaves. <br />Traffic noises disappear in a silence <br />that swallows up their worldly sound. <br /> <br />The brown, brick building isn’t ordinary now. <br />A kind of halo suffuses it, <br />body of the silence, <br />lending more beauty to the red and gold <br />than even autumn leaves should have. <br /> <br />On a busy New York street, time stops <br />in homage to the saintly man up there. <br />Is there an angel ladder here, that I can’t see, <br />or just his prayers, kind thoughts and deeds <br />raining peace and beauty, as from a living shrine?<br /><br />Max Reif<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/08-queens-vision-1983/
