You might expect the divine presence
to announce itself from the glaring sky
or the blanket of veld across the mountains,
or the noonday sun that blinds you to everything
but this overbaked excuse for a South African road.

You would not expect the divine from the road itself,
not with its grit in your nostrils and beetles
and ruts that you navigate so gingerly
to keep your axles.

At least you have axles.
More often this road supports bare feet
in dozens, maybe more, traveling this way
because there is no other way for them to travel,

striding for miles from shack to town
to farm to find one more day of work,
one goat to call their own.

If the divine does not live in this road,
it lives nowhere.
Someone has to caress these feet.