Bus Stop

March 20 2015

The school bus stops

on the sloping shoulder
of the gravel road,

like a lumbering ladybug

hunkered close.

Diesel smoke hovers

as clumps of sloppy snow
drizzle down.

In the murky light
on the final stop

of its short-hop route

-- brakes squealing, then grinding through the gears again --

the last child descends,
skirting the fender, darting for home

with barely a glance

right or left.

Idling behind the bus
I drift back to how it was
on those long milk-run rides.

The thinly padded seats

in rusty naugahyde.

The semi-sleep
in pre-dawn light

slumped against the steel.

The small intrigues
of grade school society
-- like adult life
but without the phoney smiles.

The windows fogged with breath.
The driver's narrow-eyed check

on the loudmouthed boys
who get antsy, sitting so long.

The heady mix

of their goat-like scent

pre-pubescent sweat

and warm wet wool,

along with the lavender girls
already filling out.

I was a quiet child
who never felt he fit.
As if living life
from the outside looking in
nose pressed against the glass.
Unlike the boisterous kids
who are waving through the big back window
making funny faces

at idling cars.
As if taunting us
for being stopped.
But also envious

of grown-up life

in all its mystery, and freedom.
Who want to be me

behind the wheel.

While I think
about a fresh start,
kneeling with them
on that back bench seat.
But with all I know;
the errors, regrets,
what-ifs
and should-have-beens.
A 2nd chance
to get it right.

Or would anything change

if I could live my life

over again?

As if character were destiny;
a kind of pre-determined fate
steering us along
our predictable rut,
like this bus, on its day-to-day.

Only to end up here,
peering through layers of glass
as wipers slap the rain.

Tapping the wheel

as I obediently wait

for the bus to be on its way.



I actually never rode a bus to and from school. And certainly not on one of those long rural routes. I walked; all seasons, every year of school.

There is a generous use of pathetic fallacy here. The dreary weather matches the mood of dissatisfaction and regretful remembrance.

In my description of the ride, I end both stanzas (3 and 4) with hints of impending adulthood: the smiling duplicity; the nascent sexuality. Puberty becomes the dividing line, and with a mixture of envy and wonder we're both looking over it from opposite sides. Everything about the driver's impatience, obedience, and drudgery make the idealized freedom of adulthood grimly ironic. While the stresses of youth -- the implied lack of confidence, politics, awkward negotiation of sexuality, and regimentation of school -- put the lie to nostalgia's carefree impression.

I really have come to believe how much character (temperament, personality) is destiny. It doesn't resolve the nurture/nature debate. But it does push back in time the point at which we become effectively "fixed"; while also acknowledging how hard change is.

And I have to confess that I do feel about my own life much as the narrator does: as if I've lived life waiting for it to start; as if I'm living with my nose pressed up against the glass. I've described this feeling before, in a phrase I stole from Oliver Sachs: like "an anthropologist from Mars", an alien observer, come down to Earth.