Seventy minutes or years
The bus does not stop

We ride past invisible fields
Through birch forests
I see their ghosts
In the headlights' glow
By day it could be Wisconsin
Or Indiana or Michigan

Our people have well-hidden scars
Seeds of pain buried deep
Underneath these invisible fields
Brother betrayed brother here
And many times before that
Since the first of us

Fairy lights dance on the horizon
Assemble to make a suburb
The bus does not stop
By night it could be Wisconsin
Or Indiana or Michigan
And so it is

Seventy years or minutes
To process these thoughts

And in that time
Seeds of pain may grow
Into a harvest of love
If we choose