by Alisa Gordaneer
doesn’t matter if it’s rosa’s bus
there on the corner in the weeds, tyree says
it is so it is, and it looks just like that old 1947 thing
its windows open to the mourning doves
who nest in the seats, taking places
where white asses black asses all those
asses sat and got to work in mornings filled
with promise or flitting dreams
from last night, afternoons footweary
and ready for supper, feet legs backs heads aching
with the strain of days and only a few more pennies
in the pocket after fare. you can see why
at some point you just gotta sit down
for your rights until they park the bus
and it’s either drive with you or drive over you
because you have become
miraculous, you find as you rise up
to the applause of angels that this time
even the weeds are gonna rise along
and you hold out your hand to pull the soft
fluff off a dandelion the same hair as your
grandmother who taught you
cradled in her lap
said you sit here you sit anywhere you got
a right to be sitting
and you think of here sitting on these seats
where the doves are nesting now and the sky
is open through the windows as wide
as blue as free as all that.
Alisa Gordaneer is the editor of Monday Magazine, an alternative newsweekly in Victoria, BC, Canada, where she lives and writes on an urban homestead with her family. She is currently working on a novel and a collection of poems.
