Thinking Outside the Bus

Is it a Poem of Public Transit if the bus never shows up?

Photo by Josh Wilburne on Unsplash

I’ve posted a number of poems (no really, quite a few) about persons or tiny scenes that I’ve witnessed while riding public transit in my city. How about a couple of poems about things you might see through a bus’s window?

---

MAN ON GETTES BOULEVARD


Back turned to the street, body one lean dangerous shadow
shocking the drab sidewalk, he grips the plastic comb like a switchblade,
scowls at his black-curtain reflection in a restaurant window
as if it had called him out. The half-silver hair is longer
than it looks raked back across his scalp, the frown
digs resting lines deeper into his dark face; the jeans
and battered jacket are what he has worn like skin
ever since he came to manhood. He glares a second longer
at the son of a bitch in the window, shoves the comb
into his pocket and wheels around at last,
staring down a pallid city, a fog-bleached sky.

---

SUNDAY AFTERNOON IN A NEIGHBORHOOD I DON’T KNOW


A ripple of scarlet curtain splashes through a partly open window
and paints itself against the old white wall above a corner store 
on a street strange to me, in a district I see only in passing,

and beyond the curtain, inside the open window, the curved back
of a wooden chair faces inward to an unseen upstairs room,
walls stained scarlet by Sunday afternoon light; and someone
upstairs, unseen and quiet in the room she knows best, 

is making tea or playing checkers with a neighbor, napping after church
or talking to her daughter on the phone, hearing now and then the tap
of frame against sill, shifting in the breeze. A Sunday afternoon’s life

behind that window, a life someone is living in her own room,
in the neighborhood she knows best; the afternoon I would be living
behind my own curtains, if it were not my turn to be the stranger
passing by, eyes wide to a truth that has traveled through so many poems:

how countless lives are lived, inside and outside, in the same moment,
how everything strange is also familiar, every unknown street
is someone’s home – a truth that might not have needed repeating

in yet another poem, except that the curtain was so very scarlet 
next to the curved chair-back, against the old white wall.

---

[You can listen to an audio version of the poems using the little widget above the photograph.]

Each of these poems undoubtedly contained a bus in its first draft. Each bus got edited out; not strictly relevant to what I was describing, plus how many times can one poet write about bus rides? (Oh dear reader, the end is not in sight.)

“Man on Gettes Boulevard” was written earlier this year, after I caught a glimpse of the startling person it describes while my bus was was stopped at a light. I was taken by the contrast between his ferocious, almost feral persona and his complete dedication in the moment to a spot of grooming-in-public; not a contrast that would surprise me if I was writing a poem about a cat, but in this guy it was … piquant. Never seen him before or since; just got a quick sketch of him as I peered through the bus’s window.

(“Gettes Boulevard” is a pseudonym, by the way; those of you who already know where I live probably sussed that out. Just trying to stay semi-anonymous here on the internets.)

“Sunday Afternoon…” was written about ten years ago, after an impromptu public-transit adventure. I’d boarded a semi-familiar bus meaning to ride south for four or five stops, then get off and walk to a nearby park; but before it was time to pull the cord I realized that I had no idea what the rest of this bus’s southbound route looked like, so … why not stay on and see where I ended up? That was a ride! The city I live in — like most cities, maybe — is made up of semi-distinct neighborhoods like urban villages, more or less squished together, with residents rooted in their own few blocks most of the time. A trip through a series of other villages, familiar and foreign at the same time? With no exact notion where I was, or where I’d be ten minutes from now? I was enthralled. A little nervous, too … but mostly enthralled — even before I caught sight of the scarlet curtain.

I have a special feeling for that poem, too, because of when it appeared. In the early months of 2013 I’d had an upspring of creativity, and poems came welling out in a joyous flood. By May, the flood had slowed; when “Sunday Afternoon…” presented itself to be written in June, I was grateful and relieved. And it was the last poem I wrote that year; months went by before I had another one to work on.

I finished 17 poems in 2013, my largest annual harvest as an adult poet … until this year. In 2023, after a lifetime of journaling and decades of therapy and three years of retirement, I’ve finally been able to create and sustain a regular writing practice (imperfect, but lively) for more than a few weeks at a time. It still feels new and fragile; I’m still convinced, every time the newest poem is nearly done, that there won’t be another one — not for months, maybe never again. And I keep showing up in my notebook, scribbling nonsense when I have nothing sensible to say. I keep walking around my neighborhood, eavesdropping on the next table in cafes, peering out the window of the bus. And poems keep presenting themselves to be written. I’m the person I always wanted to be when I grew up … and every frustrating work day, every lunch-hour poem, every upspring and every dry spell and every bus ride, helped me get here. Grateful doesn’t begin to cover it; grateful will have to do for now.