Elevator and Bus

With strangers, she stepped

into an elevator to be lifted.
Doors closed, doors opened:

onto a bus where she sat
riding with new strangers.
"I didn't want this," she said

to a gray-haired woman.
"No one does," said the woman.
Then everyone began to sing

a song she did not know.
"I'm scared," she said to
a weary, kind brown man.

"It is all right," he said.
"This is the bus we're on,
and all of us are frightened?

hans ostrom, 2025