The Boy and the Bus
A Poem Story
In the empty suburban evening
about eleven by my reckoning
I wait for an 88 Bus, just
down from the strip mall –
orange sodium street lamps arch
away in an curve down the hill
dragging their own misty halos
no warm bodies edge between
the box block shops straddling
the sealed concrete skin of the world.
A grandstand of jarring cog-grinding
smashes its way into my brittle hush
– bus driver wrestles his gear lever,
but the teeth won’t mesh…
he gives up, rolls alongside,
jerks in a hiss of hydraulics to a halt
driver looks at me – I he, and at his
illuminated tomb on rubber wheels
all encased in orange aluminium.
No other souls haunt the ride –
doors crash inward, a rubber guillotine:
driver impatiently checks me perched on the curb
I slide cold coins into his heart-pained hand, I
