David Gershator

Terminal Vision

At the bus station’s Lost-and-Found, I’m looking for spectacles left behind on the Jerusalem bus. A reluctant clerk dumps brown bags full of glasses on the counter, a hoard fit for a holocaust collection. “Here, try your luck.”

I let my fingers rove over the pile, all types, all styles, from a la mode to outmoded to prehistoric. I‘m stunned by this vision of vision, lost on the way to and from Jerusalem.

The clerk keeps a watchful eye on me as I go through a pyramid of prescription lenses, frames, sunglasses, bifocals lost and forgotten. “Any luck?” she asks.

“No, I’m afraid it’s Kaddish for my glasses. Give me another minute please.”

She waves me off the hoard. “If you’re serious come back in a month or two. Somebody might turn them in.” Next year in Jerusalem, I mutter, but who knows.

at the terminal
I bang on the door
of the wrong bus