Number 4

It’s 6AM,
Empty buses are drifting past my window,
Bathed in the lamplight orange glow,
Imagine the crispness of the air,
As they open their great lungs.
The road-sweeper rattles his cart along the pavement.

Almost empty.
Nearly all the buses have a single rider,
The early birds,
Always on the bottom floor,
Always on the right beside the pushchair space.
Evidently the best seat on an almost empty bus.

They never look up.
Even though the bus is empty but for them,
They never look to passing windows for companionship.
Never look to the almost empty streets to see who’s there,
Not even to the solitary lampposts standing guard.

I can see a well-pressed suit waiting at the bus stop down the road,
I see his breath floating on the air,
As the bus approaches, he looks to it and not the driver,
And I wonder. Which is the second-best seat on an almost empty bus,
And is it by the first?