Poetry For Me

 Poetry For Me

 

    

In May I posted an article where I set down some thoughts on what poetry is for me. Way further back, over ten years ago, I included one of my poems in a post without any real comment on it. So now I redress that omission by describing the stages of thinking I went through and how eventually the poem crystallized into its current, more compressed form.

It relates to a fellow passenger on the local bus who intrigued me. She left a mark on me that was what prompted the poem to express or even exorcise that experience from my mind.

The opening of the poem is a bit back to front in that these were questions that beset me towards the end of the bus journey but are placed at the beginning as an introduction, to engage the reader, to express my responses, to provide an aspect of universality, as it were, to move away from the personal, the physical and emotional.

Initially the image presented is one of a cared for, attractive lady but there is also a sense of alienation – she doesn’t sit with us, she differs from us in her deliberate distancing and in her evident agitation. There is, however, a warmth of sharing in the activities she performs 

‘admitting her into an embracing sisterhood’

 that we also perform on a regular basis: groping for something in our handbags, applying  lipstick – to make ourselves more presentable.

In the penultimate verse, I begin to formulate some questions which are further developed in the opening verse. What has made her like this? Where is she going?

In the final verse, we feel almost a rejection on her part as she turns her back on us/the bus.

And with an apparently uncharacteristic strength of purpose - ‘then singularly resolute’ – she walks off to her destination – a destination that provided me with the answers I needed.

Poem : On the Vasilika Bus 23.3.13

Who or what caused her                      

To keel over, to tip beyond                                                                                                                            The point of no return?                                                                                                                                  What crisis reduced her life                                                                                                                            To the unimaginable, unbearable?

Head bent, eyes cowed, 

She sits on the steps of the bus.

Well-dressed against the morning chill in fleece jacket and hooded sweatshirt

Her grey hair warmed chestnut with golden highlights

Yet it seems she has no place

In our bus

In our society

In our world

Her hands express agitation

They put in place a floral headband only to yank it off

Then she dons cheap plastic sunglasses

She shrug-sheds her jacket

 Raises her hood then pushes it back

To entwine some strands of hair 

In an orange scrunchie

Suddenly she unzips her bag

Fingers blindly groping

Intent she searches and retrieves

A lipstick

Her rapid act of application

Is disarming and endearing

Enhancing herself and admitting herself

 Into an embracing sisterhood

Is her lipstick applied for a lost love

An anticipated meeting 

In response to a remnant of her sanity

Her fragmented femininity?

Again her fingers fumble

This time to ring the bell

To bring her lowly bus trip

To an end.

At Nea Raidestos she alights hesitantly

And crosses the road

Then singularly resolute 

She turns her back on us/the bus

And heads towards the cemetery.