Yesterday, On the Crosstown Bus

Poems of Public Transit meet Poems of Advent

Photo by weston m on Unsplash

This is an Advent poem. No fooling.

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RETURN


It’s true, he’s back. I saw him 
yesterday, on the crosstown bus. Not so much 
like the pictures; he’d shaved (a day or two ago 
at least) and pulled his hair back with 
a rubber band -- ratty Giants sweatshirt,
old Levis, and sandals that he could
have worn the last time, I guess. The face
was the same, though -- you knew it when
you watched him laughing with the boombox kids
in the back seat, flirting with a solemn baby
until the mother’s thin brown cheeks shone pink;
chatting up the Mormon twins who cruised 
the aisle in cheap black suits and earnest smiles,
shaking hands again with the loud guy
in the smelly coat, answering his random questions
as if they mattered; gazing back at a manicured man
wrapped in the Wall Street Journal, until
the manicured stare crumpled like newsprint, smudged  
into a little-boy grin. A slow ride, but he seemed
in no hurry -- I heard him ask the driver
where to transfer for the veteran’s hospital,
and when he pulled the cord and swung 
down the steps and out the opening door,
the boombox kids followed him 
and the guy in the smelly coat
and the man with the Wall Street Journal.
The baby started crying
the Mormon twins wiped their noses
and for a minute all of us looked at each other
the way you never do on the crosstown bus,
searching hard in her face my face your face
for something we had seen in his.

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

Wait, who was that?

I wrote this poem in — my goodness — 1997, thinking about an aspect of Advent that doesn’t get much emphasis these days. Advent invites Christians (and interested friends) to prepare for the arrival of a baby born long ago, and to celebrate his coming as God-With-Us; but we’re also preparing, in theory, for God-With-Us to return one day, and … judge the world? end time? bring about a new creation? “We await his coming in glory,” my fellow believers and I say in unison each Sunday … but when I think about how he showed up and lived among us the first time, it’s hard for me to believe that glory will be the first thing on his mind. Those people on the crosstown bus, now — hanging out with them is more his kind of glory. Or that’s what a poet imagines, anyhow.