Lawrence
Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
An Existential Bus Ride on the Periphery of Heaven
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious bus ticket?
-As Mary Oliver did not say in “The
Summer Day”
Is
this the right bus? Where are you going?
I
boarded the bus outside Balboa Park
With
Tolkien and Lewis smoking their pipes
Missed
a stop along University Boulevard
Because
I was listening to Pasternak
Got
off the bus at Horton Plaza (there was no Hoo)
Because
McKuen wanted to roam the rainy streets
Boarded
again a few hours later, but
Spenser
refused to sit next to a Catholic
I
told him I really enjoyed The Faerie Queene anyway
He
thanked me and autographed my death sentence
McMurtry
said, “This ain’t Texas, you know;
You
can’t even see Texas from the back of the bus”
Frankl
replied, “But there is meaning in a bus”
De
Chardin suggested that all bus-ness is coming together
Yevtushenko
declared that the bus was all about him
Eliot
thought there might not be a bus at all
My
ticket ran out at Mission Beach, and so did I
Outside
a bikini shop where the loungers ask
Not
about the meaning of life, but rather
“Spare
change? Spare change?”
