Tag: school bus

Within Close Range: The Straight-Away

The Straight-away is the longest lineal stretch of road in Shoreacres, where speed bumps do little to dissuade teenage boys in first cars from pressing down on gas pedals.

At the end of this tempting strip of asphalt, with the sun rising at my back, throwing orange and pink and unreasonable beauty into the gloomy school day scene, is the bus stop.

It is here, from autumn to early summer, I watch for the giant, yellow monster to come into view as it makes the turn at the top of the Straight-Away. 

Praying often that I missed it, or it won’t appear, and Mom has to drive me to school. 

Offering a morning’s reprieve from school bus bullies.

And a chance to gobble up freshly made donuts from the truck stop along the way.

Within Close Range: Bullies

Because our home’s so far away, 

I’m the first picked up by the bus each day

and the very first stop after school –

which makes every student on our route  

sit forty minutes more each afternoon

and me, an unwelcome sight.

Full of hormones and hate, 

those in last few rows of the long, yellow bus 

moan and groan 

as soon as I climb on,

making me nervously skitter to the nearest seat

where I crouch 

and hide 

and wait.

The hardcore insults come later

and louder

cloaked in the anonymity of the rumbling and motion 

of our rolling prison.

Deaf to what he hears, 

the bus driver just stares ahead

and goes where he’s told. 

United by the same neighborhood, 

in the opposite direction,

they snarl and nip at the back of my neck –

piercing my thin skin. 

It’s us versus them, 

in every nasty word. 

But the “them” they think I am 

is absolutely absurd.

When their rabid, backseat words 

have more than their usual bite, 

I step from the bus 

and race to the woods, 

searching for a way to shake the hurt 

in the thick, dim patches of unpeopled forest. 

I disappear among the ember-colored leaves 

which cap the many trees

before the heavy freeze 

steals the color from the land.

And there, I simply am.

Where I step to the sound of my breathing,

the movement of the clouds, 

and to the busy hush of forest life about, 

reminding me to go about my own;

and to heal my wounds

with the comforts of home.