where are you going, where have you been

You ride buses all day with a limp-gloved
heart. The getting-there isn’t important,
but the going— bus windows frame

sidewalk-walkers and their umbrellas
into photographs ledged on grandmother
fireplaces, memories you can finger but
never quite have. On the bus, you don’t walk time,

you ride it. Everything measures in lurches. 
Press nose to glass, shade pedestrians with
your face-smudged grooves, envy the outside
their sense of destination and gapping strides,

listen for their footfalls sure and certain— the
bus map says, there are still so many stops between
where you are from and where you are going