Observations: The 255

Scored one of the last few high seats
My bench-mate’s feet swing free
White leather thongs
Celeste blue toenails
This, a busier route than my 245
Our backpacks and briefcases
Perched on our laps
We don’t have the luxury
Of allowing them their own seat
The morning sun filters in
Lighting a chin of the one
In the dragon tee
Lighting a forehead of another
Across the aisle
With his Beats and his music
Nooks, Kindles, iPads, phones
The crackle of a couple of
Good
Old-fashioned
Newspapers
Books, and watchers with smiles
With arms crossed bleary-eyed
The straight-ahead stare
The articulated center Of the bus
Rotating, disorienting in my peripheral vision,
Contain the last seats to be filled
Lanky boy, world’s perfect eating machine
Baggy “trou”
Ball cap pulled down
And a changing of the guard
At the transit center
The girl sits down on the flare of my skirt
And, thumbs still poised over his phone,
One man sleeps
Beats person reads the newspaper
Over another man’s shoulder
One man standing
The lake ripples behind the smiling couple
Across from me
They release hands as he gets up
For his stop near downtown REI
She still smiles
Now holding her own hands
As we pass into the
Dark of the tunnel