Floundering in multiplicity

Driving in the city,
after so many months in rural isolation,
I am floundering in multiplicity:
so many stories, so many lives,
so many little shops to be managed,
each with its bickering employees,
and merchandise that needs to be ordered and displayed;
each with its owner, paying taxes, rent, and salaries,
and worrying that customers won't come...

So many buses, filled with faces, all unique,
all on their way from lives I cannot know
to somewhere else they want or need to be --
and what is that? Imagination churns
and still my car is inching its way
down the dark gray ribbon, threaded yellow;
pausing at each stoplight to make way for other people
in other cars, or walking, who are also on their journeys
to whatever they will see and do today;
stars in their trajectories,
spinning, drifting, in and out of vision,
cluster briefly and and then hurtle through
each other's orbits, seeking other spaces, other places,
leaving traces, bright
or fading into night...