Bus

See the bus go by at night
carrying rhomboid planes of light
and one stone profile across town.

Bus drivers wear their backs
as sweaty heaps. Their foreheads
bob inside the rearview mirror.

I hate to ride the bus. The urge
to disembark at every stop
threatens to break my heart.

I am beside myself tonight
in the fingerprint-stained windows
to my left and right.

The universe is close enough
to eat. I have faith the street
slides underneath.

See how I devolve
from passenger to freight,
how I go past my stop

and turn early into late.

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Robert Lunday is the author of Mad Flights (Ashland Poetry Press), and has recent poems in Field, Tar River Poetry, and Third Coast. He lives on a small horse farm in central Texas and teaches for Houston Community College.

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