Night Bus Poem by Bernard Henrie

Fallen dirty drunk onto a Greyhound bus,
a traveler stares into the conch shell
of a winter night and is is taken into
the hands of the deaf moon.

The bus reflects in the Mississippi River,
shimmers on the surface of the water
like a Huron bride raiding party.

My high school in that town i'm leaving:

La Plume de Ma Tante
and all my unlearned French, a marriage,
marine service and coming home young.

Divorce discussed like ordering a meal.
Property divided on the back of a napkin.
Days slip their leash. Birds change tint
lifting off for southern states.

Cities turn black as London in the blitz.
Early snow, hunched snow plows like crows
on a wire.

I drift, a man without work. Life pissed
into a corner; under a cerulean sky
the moon slips into the earth's vast shadow.