Alternative Transport

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._N._Taber

Today’s poem last appeared on the blog in 2010 and is posted today especially for readers ‘Jim and Philippe’ who are (like me) fed-up with people passing snide comments about not owing a car.

Now, people are often appalled by the fact that I don’t drive. Well, I live in a city so having a car is not essential. (It really isn’t!) I am happy to go along with the UK government’s drive to persuade everyone to use public transport more often. Even so, the Greener argument is not the only one that works for me...  

Public transport can be a real adventure.  Well, less of one or me these days, it’s true to say. I will be 67 later this year; not old, but let’s face it I have no partner and am not as young as I was either. Oh, but I’m not complaining. One way or another, I relive my life through poems where memory filters away the bad times and the good times continue to serve me well. Even in later years, they come back into play, those good times (e.g. a nothing special car drawing up alongside, a something special guy suggesting I jump in...) thereby encouraging me to add to the archives.

Now, why should an old dog learn new tricks when the old ones are such fun?

ALTERNATIVE TRANSPORT

We got chatting on a bus
in pouring rain, feeling bold

for no too-obvious reason,
cocking an ear to fairy tales
reworked by a pitter-patter

on the roof making us feel safe;

we chuckled, sharing a joke

or two, and it felt right to feel

comfortable with you

At your stop, I got off too;

we just laughed at getting wet

on a street you thought

was mine, I thought was yours,

took a while before we saw

this comedy of errors for what

it really was, not just fate
conspiring to bring us together,
but also our consenting

Another bus happened along

and dried our clothes, rumbling
ifs and whys of closet gays;

in his mirror, the driver winked,

saw clearer even than us

how (so) much happier we were

for (finally) getting it together,
two strangers on a single decker 

coming out to each other

Copyright R. N. Taber 2005; 2012

[Note: An earlier version of this poem was posted on the blog in 2010 and appears in  A Feeling for the Quickness of Time by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2005.]