Clearing A Passage

Clearing a Passage

Bumping slowly along a secondary road
through emerald countryside on a bus
customarily used for school field trips

sit countrymen, three abreast ladened
with lunches, children, hot livestock,
nodding heads, and through slit eyes

they see a girl beside the driver, sitting
with her back against the windshield on the engine’s
hump eating grapes alone, foreign and smiling.

Being different is the adventure and I
find pleasure in the rhythm of that uncertainty,
beyond the physical discomfort-

the heat, the wound on my right knee, that I am
much larger than the men, and thrilled
that my boldness and difference am found captivating, fresh.

An anomaly.

Looking rearward at the brown faces, onto the
countryside -- I imagine the day I might return
with a lover or family, leading them with stories and insight.

Solitude drapes my body and I layer it
with coat and hat as I wave to my boys
a good-bye and head out into the fall air

to catch a movie at the Plaza,
a reading and a drink at the Auburn,
my Monday night class.

Returning to house I slip through the shadows
kissing one, two, three boys as they sleep,
sit a moment to unwind before turning in.

I roll over in bed and through the early morning darkness,
see his shape, his traveled suitcase. “Have a good trip,”
I swallow, “I will see you in a week.”

Words and image by Lisa Murphy-Lamb, October 2010