From the Upriver Bus

("Do you want a little context..bus-rides between Montreal and Fredericton, St. John River Valley winding northward for a western destination (Montreal), the long period before I finally got a driver's license at the age of 44."-BB)

"From the Upriver Bus" 

by Brian Bartlett                    

                 

                       1

At a steering wheel wide as a ship’s wheel

he sighs high, comically small.

Unknown others drone downriver, bearing

lumber or livestock, furniture or oil.

His hand, a winter-wrinkled leaf,

floats up toward the windshield.

His hand held up – not for a holdup

with a pistol, but for a greeting

unpremeditated as a kiss – brings him

no cheque, no deer meat, no

rainbow-papered gift on the doorstep.

Like a lone birdwatcher saluting another

if neither thinks he owns the meadowlark, like

a swimmer flinging one word in mid-lake

to a stranger swimming from the opposite shore,

he hardly thinks of the gesture he makes.

                      

                        2

When this river country was broken

by a trail a storm could erase, a man

with frost-hooded eyebrows sped along

in a sled, his family half hidden in fur.

Bells of a stranger’s horses

became clearer and clearer.

Gloved hands, calling forth their imminent

gestures, slipped free of reins.

Struck by great waves, two ships warning

or threatening each other

startle the dark with blinking light.

                           3

Though early today his bones cried out,

he waves his unmistakable wave

as long as the sun stays above the trees.

Only when no hand answers

from behind the other windshield

does he wonder why he lifts his hand at all.

--from Planet Harbor (Goose Lane editions 1989), reprinted in Wanting the Day : Selected Poems (Goose Lane, 2003)