Back On the Bus

More Poems of Public Transit

Photo by Ant Rozetsky on Unsplash

My first post on poems of public transit identified two kinds of momentary events that such poems can describe: Contact stories and Bubble stories. Here you have one of each. The Contact story even has the word “contact” in it, for a clue.

---

Messenger


Tilting down the aisle
of a west-bound city bus,
mind bent on balance in this moment,
lunch in the next, I am stopped

by a small, insistent touch
on the knuckles of my right hand
where it clutches
my purse against my side.

I blink down at the fellow passenger
who has laid a thumb-sized
hand on mine, and now
sits upright on his nanny's lap,

meeting my gaze with a look
of bright intention. Excuse me,
the look is saying, there's a message
I'm supposed to deliver and

I'm pretty sure it's for you, sorry
about not being able to talk. Then
the nanny starts to coo, Say Hi!
and, obedient, I say Hi and smile

and walk back to where the empty
seats are, craning forward once
to catch that bright gaze again,
to show somehow that I appreciate

his being on the lookout for me with
that message, whatever it might have been:
something simple, probably, like
Drink more milk, or Never miss the chance

to take a nap. Or maybe, if
the cooing hadn't started, he might
have told me more:
Remember, even

though hunger happens, and darkness
and cramps in the belly, even when stuff
that stinks and stings comes oozing out,
even with the constant being picked up

and put someplace you didn't know
you wanted to go -- even with all that,
it's good to be here, eyes open,
hands reaching, making contact

on a west-bound bus
on a sunny day in winter,
just before lunch. It's good.
Remember that.

---

Woman Reading The New Yorker on the Bus


She sits upright in the seat ahead,
crisp shopping bags at her feet, silk scarf
swirled round the collar of a thin beige coat
just lighter than her hair, and on her face
a look of deep disapprobation:
eyebrows raised, mouth arched 
in a forbidding curve, gaze drawn 
straight down the length of her nose
to the periodical in her hands. I have recognized
the cover of course, and following her affronted stare
at a distance, I can make out a poem at the top
of the open pages, two blocks of long-lined couplets,
with prose marching column-wise around them. If I had 
to guess, which of course I don’t, but it comes unforced,
I would say it is the prose that grips
her grim attention; if she were reading the poem
her eyes would move more, and surely 
her mouth would relax the slightest bit. (Though, 
to be fair, New Yorker poems are a toss-up; 
some delicious, others I have glared at myself, 
opaque and pretentious as the droop
of this reader’s eyelids.) No, some thoughtful treatise
on politics, economy, the arts, some especially 
obscure bit of fiction, holds her enthralled
with disapproval; the poem is a typesetter’s anomaly,
a stanchion in the page’s current, manmade obstruction
invisible to the flow it shapes. At some unmarked 
stopping point she turns down a corner, a big one 
that quarters the page, closes the magazine
and tucks it in her purse, then sits back,
brows lowered, mouth relaxing, looking merely
day’s-end tired; the way she rubs her eyes 
makes me wonder if those arched brows were an effort 
to focus, if this morning perhaps her contact lenses 
refused their duty, and she despises wearing 
eyeglasses in public. She turns suddenly, 
scowling down the aisle as if feeling herself observed 
and resenting it, or trying to massage her eyes 
without rubbing them again; then leans back,  
rearranging the collar of her coat. A stop or two later 
she pulls the cord, thanks the driver in a pleasant voice,
and carries her shopping bags down the steps
to the curb. As the bus pulls away
I watch her cross the street, and through the window,
silently, I wish her a restful night
and add: when you get home, put your glasses on 
and read the poem, you might like that better.

---

I have, all my life, been someone whom babies feel free to accost and confide in. All my life, as well, I’ve been curious as can be about what other people are reading. I’m not sure what those traits say about my character, but insofar as they’ve fed my capacity to pay attention, they’ve done my poetry no harm.

I should now be writing something cogent about each of these poems, but honestly? I came late to constructing this post and I’m pretty sleepy, so I’m going to let the poems speak for themselves this time around. If you have questions or observations — or bus stories of your own! — please put them in the Comments; I’d love to read and respond to them. And I’ll be more chatty next week, I promise.