Lawrence Hall
Dispatches for the Colonial Office
LogoSophia Magazine – A Pilgrim's Journal of Life, Literature and Love
An Existential Bus Ride on the Periphery of Heaven
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious bus ticket?
-As Mary Oliver did not say in “The Summer Day”
Is this the right bus? Where are you going?
I boarded the bus outside Balboa Park
With Tolkien and Lewis smoking their pipes
Missed a stop along University Boulevard
Because I was listening to Pasternak
Got off the bus at Horton Plaza (there was no Hoo)
Because McKuen wanted to roam the rainy streets
Boarded again a few hours later, but
Spenser refused to sit next to a Catholic
I told him I really enjoyed The Faerie Queene anyway
He thanked me and autographed my death sentence
McMurtry said, “This ain’t Texas, you know;
You can’t even see Texas from the back of the bus”
Frankl replied, “But there is meaning in a bus”
De Chardin suggested that all bus-ness is coming together
Yevtushenko declared that the bus was all about him
Eliot thought there might not be a bus at all
My ticket ran out at Mission Beach, and so did I
Outside a bikini shop where the loungers ask
Not about the meaning of life, but rather
“Spare change? Spare change?”
