Happiness is

A poem remembering a rural bus trip in Mexico

Happiness is

 

riding in an old bus on a mountain road

with a driver age sixteen or so

wheeling his chariot into the sun.

 

A live goat on the roof, chickens under the seats,

the corrugated floor rattling against my boots,

I am happy, on the move from room to room.

 

A whiff of weed from an Indian in the back

reminds me of old reveries.    

We pass a decrepit village

where kids come running begging . . . 

 

From a trestle, a broad brown river. 

 

It’s up to me to make sense of this,

the old woman with chickens isn’t going to

and the gurgling baby at the breast isn’t either. 

 

The bus rollicks down a hill

through another village, not the village

where I’m going

 

and over another broad brown river

flowing to the coast �"

I can almost hear the breakers now

 

and lord, this happiness is killing me.

    

Reviews

[Samuel Dickens]

Marvelous. I'm not so much into poetry--not unless it's really good and tells me something worth remembering, and this does just that. I need to fit myself into things I read, and it was so easy to do, here, having once taken a similar bus ride. (Philippines, 1973)
These words are a delight. Thank you.