Jesse

15

Bus Into Town

The summer’s well into its corporate years
and I do the same thing every day.
Today I sat on the morning bus into town
and watched as an old man with a suitcase tugged
and finally, struggling,
pulled his worn heart onto the bus
and took his seat, reserved.
I watched him stuff his composition books,
buckling yarn and decorous coffee-bean paint,
deeper into the front pocket.
I told him that I’m like him,
and that I’d love for my notebooks
to be army vets too.
Turns out he didn’t speak a word of English,
and I not a word of his poetic cipher.
But he seemed to understand
the blank page in my right hand
and he showed me the first page
of the notebook deepest in his suitcase’s front pocket.
“08/07/1964,” he pointed out in the upper right.
He smiled in the way of a never-absent father,
puffing out a bit of air, a sensor of levity,
I understood.
I began to laugh, and he patted me on the shoulder.
I took my seat again, and gave him a nod as I exited
into town.