230 PA RT T W O
through late afternoon
a bus journeys west,
the windshield flashing pink,
pink glancing off of metal,
brushing the dented flank
of blue, beat-up enamel;
down hollows, up rises,
and waits, patient, while
a lone traveller gives
kisses and embraces
to seven relatives
and a collie supervises.Signs of human dwelling turn up. A local sea image, “ridged as clamshells,”
sharpens our glimpse of the church more than a bus would allow. We ’re moving
in time, too, “through late afternoon.” Maybe this travelogue means a second
leaving-behind, and some sort of pilgrimage past maple and birch, farmhouse
and church. Then like a Canterbury pilgrim, “a lone traveller” joins the beat-up
bus that must also contain our Chaucer, our guide.
Now goodbye and “The bus starts”—such a short sentence! Landscape re-
sumes, maritime and domesticated.
Goodbye to the elms,
to the farm, to the dog.
The bus starts. The light
grows richer; the fog,
shifting, salty, thin,
comes closing in.
Its cold, round crystals
form and slide and settle
in the white hen’s feathers,
in gray glazed cabbages,
on the cabbage roses
and lupins like apostles;
the sweet peas cling
to their wet white string
on the whitewashed fences;
bumblebees creep
inside the foxgloves
and evening commences.Bishop’s homegrown rhyming fits her scene: “dog / fog,” “cling / string.” We
half notice as the dog gives way to “thin” fog that “comes closing in.”