Four Minutes Thirty-Three Seconds

While backpacking
through Moscow, Russia
last Summer,
I took a taxi
to Saint Basil's Cathedral.

The driver
did not speak
a word
of English.
And my Russian
was not yet
at the level
I would be comfortable
communicating at.

So,
for Four Minutes Thirty-Three Seconds,
we shared a silence
that had more meaning
than any attempt we could have made
at having a conversation.

In that Four Minutes Thirty-Three Seconds,
my mind brought me to a place
in the mountains
I often visited as a child.
I remembered the church
that sat atop a snowy plateau,
overlooking the small, secular town
where my grandfather grew up.
It had been abandoned
since a landslide took out the roads
leading up to it,
many years ago.

I remembered
looking up at that church
and thinking
it was the greatest,
most magnificent sight
I had ever seen.
I had dreams
of one day
climbing that mountain,
straight up to the top,
so I could see the church
the way folks had seen it,
before it was regretfully abandoned.

I shook myself
from this dream-like state
as we pulled up
to Saint Basil's Cathedral.
Although it had only been
Four Minutes Thirty-Three Seconds,
it felt as though
I had been in that taxi
for an hour at least,
lost in my thoughts
and fond memories
of my childhood.