Bus Par

Once on our way to Las Vegas, Nevada,
we met eight people on the Greyhound bus.
And if you wonder why bus was our transit,
it’s because flying that time wasn’t us.

First was a man with a handlebar mustache;
he wore a white suit and had a gold chain.
He said, “The hound rolls with wheeze on the highway;”
it was as if we were hearing from Twain.

Then as we traveled among truck and auto,
we saw a woman in a business suit.
She had green eyes and Toshiba notebook,
and told us she had been born in Beirut.

So with the diesel drone bold in Missouri,
(the Buckeye State fading with the corn stalks),
we spotted the image of Shirley Temple;
such were the grin and the lure of her locks.

Grey picked a soldier up in Oklahoma;
he missed his flight--he had been at Fort Bragg.
Twain quipped when he heard the soldier lamenting:
“Bereft of Jet you will not suffer lag.”

On the way west we stopped at Albuquerque;
in came a tall Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.
“O I’m not him!” he corrected us quickly:
“Wrongful identity is, of course, par.”

Back on the bus with his face on a window,
there moaned a man who was ‘bout forty four.
I learned that he was a compulsive gambler;
he’d bet the farm and he just heard the score.

On my way back to my seat up the aisle,
I saw a teen with a bow in her hair.
She was respect wrapped in gentle politeness,
virtues today so uncommonly rare.

Soon we were traveling in Arizona;
not far from us sat a Mexican man.
He told us he was from Zihuatanejo,*
and life in Phoenix was part of the plan.

We got to Vegas and so we departed;
others were bound to remain on perforce.
I thought about all the various people,
but then I knew how it‘s par for the course.


40 Lines
Writer’s Cramp
January 19, 2014

*Zihuatanejo (say-whah-tah-NEH-ho)