The rich take a plane or hire a car,
but our power is only waiting hour
after hour at the cancelled
bus station, waiting for the backup bus
to heave its way down from Tampa,
while the driver in cigarette-
stained undershirts waits with us,
repeating over and over, he “didn’t
f-up.” We half-believe him, half
want to blame anything with a pulse
for the heaviness like a white fire that
pours over our limbs in this tiny
cordoned-off station like an observatory
on Mars. Yet drifting on, we can
half-believe we smell a shift
in the wind, as the traffic like a cruel
but predictable god relents, we half
believe we can hear the bus drivers
calling out to one another over
their black staticky gadgets in a
long archipelago, like freed birds
winging their way south, past
office towers and board rooms
where the brokers trade futures, yet
remain locked in some terribly easy
version of themselves.
xxx
Published in Heartworm by Adam Scheffler which is available here.