Sometimes the entrance is choked.
Sometimes the a/c is out and it is nearly 100 degrees and, oh my god, the humidity.
Sometimes you can walk faster than this thing, and someone really ought to do something about that.
But so what?
Four times hourly, every day of the year, I can glimpse a preview of heaven, hear the fore-echoes of
what might be or is to come. A rough and ragged paradise, which is how I know it is real, not one of
the shinier versions on show. Who says heaven won’t be noisy or throw a few elbows?
Just when I am most tired, foot-weary, burdened, schlepping a tote’s worth of worries, needing
restoration or at least a vision of regrowth, I am gifted a voyage on the bus.
Yeah sure, sometimes the chariot is delayed, like for real, its eyed wings must be plowing the air some
place else, maybe somewhere over Queens or The Bronx while I wait here on the Lower East Side,
who knows, that’s life, deal with it.
Yet once embraced, the vision sings the body electric, on sore feet, with walkers, in wheelchairs.
A rambunctious heaven, it will sing along with reggaeton and hip-hop, exhalations of grace. It will
speak in every voice and with every accent, often right in your ear.
“I need to fill my grandmother’s prescription…”
“Best stop for you is at A and Thirteenth…”
“Let me help you with those packages…”
“Please take my seat…”
“A miracle: the Knicks won last night!”
“I love you, mija, home in ten…”
It will be every kind of food described and debated, and eaten, one seat away.
It is a rolling commonwealth, a congregation in the MTA’s pews: heaven is hectic and hits potholes;
it’s human.
Selah.