In my lonely bus stop days

I would stand inside the swirling snow-clouds

Waiting for the bus, and swear to you,

That day to this, it never came.

In that huddled mass of poor humanity

Who either did not have a car or did not like

To drive in such a tempest I met the actors

In my one act-plays. Some I remember now, but those

Whose faces cast an ashen pallor on my memory

Have their place as well. They kept me warm through the

Winter nights, as I watched the snow blow

Sideways in the streetlights, and to paraphrase Fitzgerald,

Became prey to the wild intimacies of strangers.

Thus did the sad faced Catholic girl admit to me

That she mourned the baby she could not permit to come

To term. And the man who said his smoking pot was an addiction

For which he could not now remonstrate his children, lest

He face the truth that he had, for thirty years, been a fool.

But there was also the black grandmother

Whose sweet smile was brighter than the snow

And whose breast-pressed afghan, she said, was a gift to

Her daughter’s fifth and frailest newborn.

Or the man, dressed in a full-blown Santa suit, who ho-ho-ho’ed us,

And said, too bad about you guys, but he was toasty warm.

And of course most of the silent ones just smiled

And, huddled up against the cold, reminded me I was not alone in

My abject winter misery.

So we shivered in commiseration; laughed;

Told a few lame jokes until the bus

Did eventually come along

No matter what I tell you now.

12/22/2002

Posted on 12/22/2002
Copyright © 2025 Ken Harnisch