The Bus (working)

Through your kitchen window, you see your neighbor,
the asphalt seal-coater, driving his truck and trailer
up the gray winter street. Why is the roof-vent on the trailer open?
Full of asphalt, fumes and heat, the vent begins to deliver dreams.

The big, yellow bus emerges beneath you as you saw an opening in its roof.

You experience clear, eucalyptus air and laughter as your father helps below
in the California clarity where you and wife have parked the bus of dreams.

The bus wouldn't fit on the neat steep curvy street
where your father lives in the beautiful hillside house
with the deck, the flowers, tiny green front yard, his crumbling marriage
suburbanized across the Golden Gate.

You twice cut openings through the yellow roof and the inside ceiling rainbow,
two metal sheets sandwiching wires in '50s insulation to the back lights.
You cut the wires accidentally only once when you discover they are there.
You repair them, learning school bus electricity from the simple teacher, Accident.

Lying back in the beanbag chair on astroturf in your bussing living room,
stopped en route anywhere -- in the desert, on the shore, among the Tetons --
vent lids, screens and cranks float in ceiling-painted rainbow above.

You look down again while sawing, see your dad's white hair and moustache in front of his smile, then debussed-decades later
turn to awake in today's gray morning, longing all.
2:17 PM 1/16/2010
Source:
Now through your kitchen window, you see your neighbor, the asphalt seal-coater driving his truck with the heavy black trailer, go up the gray winter street. The roof-vent on the trailer is open. You wonder why it's open on this subfreezing day: is the trailer full of questions? of heat?

As he passes, you find yourself through another window, sitting atop the big, yellow bus while you saw an opening to fit one of its roof vents. You sense your father helping below, inside, though you cannot see him; you experience clear, leafy air and laughter in the suburban clarity of the California street where you have parked the bus en route across America to see everyone and -place you know and never did.

The bus you learned to drive on and off the ferry from Alaska, through Seattle, across the Columbia, the Oregon coast, down the Pacific Coast Highway. Here you are in Marin, a lifestyle mecca where there is temporary rest, family and obligation.

You could not park to fit the bus on the steep side over the hill along a curvey, neat street where your father lives in a house carved into the rock with his crumbling marriage, deck, flowers, tiny watered green front yard, so you parked it here.

One morning you twice cut square openings in the yellow, rounded roof. You cut on through the ceiling and a band of color in the rainbow painted in Alaska. You accidentally cut a knot of wires between those two metal sheets sandwiching '50s insulation and Detroit engineering, and thus learn about vehicular electicity from the simple teacher, Accident. You see the roof vents' close-up workings -- screens and cranks and moving air as you sprawl in the beanbag chair on astroturf beneath the rainbow-painted ceiling, stopped somewhere en route to nap. You miss the kitty and your wife sitting in the stuffed chair next to you as you drive.

You look down again through a finished vent opening, see your dad's white hair and moustache in front of his smile, then turn to writing in the gray morning as the neighbor's trailer with its mysterious vent emerges from the sparkling mist of the yellow bus,leaking questions.