Traffic..................

A child on a silver bicycle,
a young mother pushing a stroller,
and a runner who looked like he was running to Patagonia

have all passed my car, jammed
into a traffic jam on a summer weekend.
And now an elderly couple gradually

overtakes me as does a family of snails -
me stalled as if in a pit of tar
far from any beach and its salty air.

Why even Buddha has risen
from his habitual sitting
and is now walking serenely past my car,

holding his robes to his chest with one hand.
I watch him from the patch of shade
I have inched into as he begins to grow smaller

over my steering wheel then sits down again
up ahead, unfurling his palms
as if he were only a tiny figurine affixed to the dash.

-Billy Collins, as published in The Rain In Portugal