In Transit: Love Poems to the City

In Transit is a collection of poems and prose by Clare Morris, who lives in San Francisco. She and her guide dog, Joy, ride the city's MUNI buses, which provide the setting for many of the poems. "When I climb onto a bus," she says, "I climb into the human condition. Here I find a micro-world that is vulnerable, inclusive, delightful and dangerous. I find us here. I find myself here."

Her poems also express her experiences on San Francisco streets, cafes, museums, concert halls and other urban haunts. Pervading all of them is a view of the city as sacred space and its people as alive with sacred significance, no matter how inhumane they might sometimes seem. She seeks, and usually finds, beauty and meaning in the least likely urban places and situations.

The book also includes two brief reflections: on the essential connection between the city and ourselves, and on the value of apparently random meetings among strangers in urban contexts, where everyone is "in transit." The book ends with an appendix, which invites us to participate in any city through a variety of ways – to know it and thereby to know ourselves.