I. <br /> <br />The company’s magnetic logo plunked <br />onto both sides of my Mazda, <br />I sit parked beside a field of new snow <br />that covers my memory with innocence <br />in front of some faceless warehouse, <br />waiting for Jay the dispatcher to call. <br /> <br />Finally, he tells me where the packages wait. <br />I cross a bridge to the depressed <br />steel mill towns on the East Side <br />and the oil refineries I never saw as a child <br />though I grew up only twenty miles away. <br /> <br />Soon after that, the weather turns. The wild <br />spirit of the spring, a young lion, <br />jumps in my car window one night, <br />pawing me and carousing as I drive <br />thirty miles, across the Missouri, <br />for a lab pick-up at a rural hospital. <br /> <br />Always, I hang with my companions <br />NPR and endless books on tape, <br />styrofoam cups, delicacies and coffee, <br />a notebook and a pen. <br /> <br />II. <br /> <br />Every day the Mystery <br />of driving a sacred world, <br />God’s footprints everywhere <br />as though He just left <br />and His fragrance still lingers. <br /> <br />Even as these moments come up in memory, <br />the humor of the game goes on, <br />for where I looked for Him in vain <br />when each moment had its fling with the Present, <br />now as each arises again, <br />part of a slide show frozen on mental film, <br />I see He was there all along. <br /> <br />Beauty is back there calling me <br />even while continuing to play hide-and-seek <br />in the life I've exchanged that one for, <br />different trappings on the surface <br />but underneath the same 'job', <br />pursuing the Loveliness that will not fade.<br /><br />Max Reif<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/17-hymn-to-my-days-as-a-delivery-guy/
