Our bus across the Yorkshire countryside was not like the Wensleydale Omnibus, alas. http://www.wensleydaleomnibus.co.uk/
Final poem of the day…
Taking the number prompt from Jo Bell’s 52 today – and thinking about a moment on a bus journey that a friend and I took yesterday, when on our way to Holmfirth.
310
In the top second row,
we float through Netherthong,
raise an eyebrow and a titter.
Two young ‘professionals’
in a dialogue of loud future tense:
our shopping list of desires
for our less than 60 years.
In the coveted front row –
(the seats which feel
like an out-of-body experience)
in a rustling nest from Wilko:
a girl, perhaps under ten,
her grandma, 60-or-so.
The bus slows, “What’s going on
Gran?” There are dark suits,
post-ceremony loitering, flat
black-hatted faces and time
held captive in the clock tower.
It’s bright outside. Dark cars twinkle
from every double-yellow line: including this
sharp bend, edging around the graveyard.
“It’s illegal,” says the elder, “parking there,
in the way, on a corner like that.”
We see them, peering down, with all
one-hundred-and-twenty-something
of our combined years. Watch them now,
watching closely, as two grey bumpers
edge nearer and nearer
together.
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