[sense of place]
BUS
By Bill Schneider
David Boggs, South Central Storm. Oil on linen, 36” x 36”
Bill Schneider has poems published in The Atlanta Review, The Southern Review, Northwest Review, Folio, and Cottonwood among others. He was the co-winner of the 2001 Grolier Poetry Prize and winner of the 2002 Kinloch Rivers Chapbook competition. He teaches writing and literature at Concordia College, Moorhead, MN.
16
A man asks off at Island Park, steps down, struggles over the snowplow bank at the not-quite corner where we stop. Then we rattle down the street, down its furrowed tracks of graveled, salted ice. An early moon floats behind the bare-limb trees and street lamp crooks, above the high dike hill rubbed slick by tubes and boards kids slide down on. I walked there on Saturday, frisky and fresh, luxurious in the spring-like swelter, in the dry, clear light we had that day, and I marveled at the yellow hats and boots, the red canvas coats, the bright green leggings, all the kids trudging up, sliding down. It was hard though, seeing kids like that, but it was the fathers who got me most—on sleds behind, or running down shouting watchitwatchit, or the one who knelt in the snow to zip a snowsuit leg, his child’s mittened hand familiar at his neck. I’d like that too. I’d cherish the zipping, linger long with it—to sense that small hand—its familiarity, its balance and trust. Then, sledding done, I would have shown that kid the tunnels squirrels make through deep park snow, or how the river freezes above its bouldered falls like a shell, and later, how I fix a pretty good grilled cheese. But still, tonight, even without those things, I feel fine—I do like buses— moments inside that are just for seats, for sitting down, for letting bus be bus, and for the jouncing over ice and rut that shakes a heart—for the pain that might slip out. First published in Louisiana Literature
