Musee...

Bus stops can seem so full of sad little stories,
being tight, efficient little microcosms of the
rest stops that line our interstates, and oh,
we know what goes on there: the tragedy,
the grasping, the stories we're told; mostly
cautionary. But bus stops, so nearer, so
much more accessible: the homeless sleeping
in filth, the fetal position, curled up at any hour,
the graffiti etched into plastic walls; perhaps
a faint claim to something proprietary and tangible
to those who may feel they possess too few solid things:
'possess' being, in this case, synonymous with control.
You can almost feel, in the cold stone of bench seats,
the same stories that have played out, again
and again, the push and pull of transitory living,
of going and wanting to stay,
of staying and wanting to go.
Take, for instance, the 60 out of Cloverdale:
a night like any other; rain falling in buckets,
or even not: you're dry enough to stand and watch.
The last bus out of town departs at ten.
It leaves a single strip of fluorescent on toward the back.
The sixty plods south along the boulevard,
it stops at points, a shiver and a hiss,
picks up fares, lurches on.
And it glows in the dark like a vigil.
Past the shuttered brake plant,
then a storage yard at a shoulder on the right,
a roar of the engine, it turns a bend,
and passes, then, out of view.