Stuck In Traffic

This morning the shrine is packed with pilgrims,
worshipful and dusty, ragged from the road.
There's conflict in my soul:
solitude or community?
Go in with the throng,
or wait outside for private revelation?

Eyes forward. Keep your focus.
The murmuring crowd is ocean, meadow, forest
each fish or blade of grass, each pilgrim soul
moved by the same strange current.

The shrine is bigger than it looks from outside.
Where have the crowds gone?
I am tiny, antlike, crawling on the spoke of a giant wheel
toward the hub. Others crawl their own spokes.
One axle turns us all.