While Waiting for the Bus
Under the eaves of the gas-mart—swallows
fall into the day, wheel before the headless
grooms of the formal wear shop, angle low
as my shoes, then comet up, sheer, careless
of traffic, all that is grounded or down.
A flight of leaf-blown cursives, blue coats
over dashing white, the red-rift of dawn
painted upon their crowns and busy throats.
I must learn to keep them with me, to hold,
somehow, their accomplished joy when I’m gone
to the city where I am mostly old
and their song, under the noise of hours, is done.
But now, auto exhaust cripples the air
as my grey somnambulant bus draws near.
Copyright © 2019 by Eliot Khalil Wilson. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on July 2, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets.
“I spend a lot of time waiting for the bus and while I wait, I look for images. ‘While Waiting for the Bus’ is the first poem in a book of sonnets about passengers in this dystopic American economy. There is nothing at all fictional about this particular poem. The sonnet form, with its casual easy-seeming difficulty, seemed right for the subject.”
—Eliot Khalil Wilson
Eliot Khalil Wilson
Eliot Khalil Wilson is the author of three books of poems, including most recently the audio-chapbook The Lunatic’s Left Man (Golden Walkman Press, 2019).