Saint on the Southbound S2, or Ode to the Bus Driver

As if this cross-town journey is a pilgrimage,
you greet all comers with a penitent's stare.
Ataraxic pose despite the jolts, deep-set eyes,
recesses of devotion. Calm brow an altar to

hair thinned enough that you could be taken
for a father. Padre nuestro on the southbound bus,
patience in traffic, humility in your cotton jacket,
your simple workman's dinner in a Safeway bag.

The bus fills, empties, and someone here
needs your blessing of small talk of weather and family,
confides in hosannas pooling in your dark irises,
sympathy riding your smile. The woman

who will go downtown for a third time this week
for pills to save a body whose real joy now is mere motion.
She exits, exhorting us to praise Him—should we not
also praise you, deliverer without discrimination?

The loud complainers, lovers, babies.
The man who slumbers in his faint perfume
of whiskey and urine. Those of us who give
him room, who see him now—

Surely you know our shortcomings
as you have come to understand
the specificity of misery. Incandescent,
your face gives up its furtive compassion,

a tableau where stubble and blemish are sanctified.
The monotony of stops, the churn of bodies moving past,
all day, the chiming of signals signifying not your release
but others'— There must be burden in this—

Though we thank you, you are barely remembered
in those eddying moments that close the day—
a small gesture in departing, not quite
meager tribute, much less prayer.