On the Bus to the Ferry

I wish I could recall the name of the young man
on a bus, late one night on the way to the ferry.

He said nothing, or little enough,
but in those moments of the ordinary,

the driver shifting gears,
my heart shed leaves

it did not know it had.
They fell on his unremarkable face

in the halo of a reading light,
and I let a little of my heart

whisper in the silence.
I hope it did not frighten him.

Once, I hitchhiked three hours north
in the bed of a pick-up truck with a boy I’d met,

the gravel road kicking up dust,
the driver slugging from a six pack of Labatt’s

between his knees, the sun hot, my mouth a desert
although my heart was a tree with fruit and shade.

But now the air is trembling with reminders
of what has withered,

and it turns out there are seasons

in which each spent leaf-stem of the heart
leaks a little blood and becomes an absence,

the world turning itself inside out
in front of its sons and daughters,

to inspect its sorrowful seams.

Photo by Ryan Ancill on Unsplash.