Busrider – a poem by Bruce Parker

Busrider

My father took me to the bus station in Albuquerque
for the start of a student tour of Europe.
I was first on the bus
and stayed,
in my seat until the bus was under way.
I didn’t get on and off excitedly
like the other kids.  My father said later
he didn’t realize until then 
I didn’t think I’d actually get to go,
that my alcoholic, schizophrenic mother would do something
that would scuttle the trip.   

Just graduated from high school,
I was the second- or third-oldest kid on the bus.
The tour organizers had given every kid on the bus a New Testament,
every kid except the Jewish kid, who along the way
crawled up into a luggage rack, fell asleep and slept through 
the bus getting washed in St. Louis. I was the only kid
who actually read the little black tome,
not being exposed to it at home or in a church.
The other kids just accepted them, 
part of the background of their lives,
grounded in a faith I didn’t know.

I read that New Testament and discussed it
with another older boy.  I was especially struck by
If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love,
I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal, and all the rest of Corinthians 13.
The chaperones overheard us.  
In Austria I bought a large, black hat
which I wore with my sport coat because it brought better service in restaurants.
The chaperones dubbed me Preacher,
they prevailed upon me to lead reading and prayers on the bus
when we traveled on Sundays.

The hat was stolen out of my old car,
a 1947 Plymouth painted gray with a brush,
my first year of college. 

Bruce Parker is the author of the chapbooks Ramadan in Summer, (Finishing Line Press, 2022) and Tears for Things (Plan B Press, 2024), and Marriage: A History (Finishing Line Press, 2026). He holds an MA in Secondary Education from the University of New Mexico. His work appears in Triggerfish Critical Review, Blue Unicorn, Cerasus, Prairie Schooner. Connecticut River Review (which nominated his poem “Grief Makes the Heart Apparent” for a Pushcart Award), and elsewhere. He lives in Portland, Oregon.