View From A Steamed-Up Bus Window Poem by C Richard Miles

As my rattling Transdev bus chugs on
In its grumpy rush-hour peregrination
Through the already darkening day's end
Of Bradford's murky northern outskirts,
Condensation-glazed lad-scratched glass
Metamorphoses the winterworld outside
Into a semi-opaque panchromatic fairyland.

As dozy daylight dissolves to torpid twilight,
Mundane suburbia subtly transforms itself
Quasi-miraculously into something magical
Where orange angels with golden halos askew
Hover, swathed in a heavenly hangover haze,
As swirling sodium streetlights suffuse into
A slate-grey mushroom-soup sky-swamp.

But it is coming close to Christmas, so
A myriad other shimmering merrylights
Melodically oust the prosaic public lamps
As cataracts of electric-blue LCD icicles
Abseil almost nonchalantly from
Titanium-white snow ski-slope precipices
Of sundry tawdry council-house roofs.

In the stone-built Victorian village centre
A psychedelic space-rocket of a Norway Spruce
Prepares for incipient take-off to the stars
Amidst encircling red and white flares
Of bad-tempered brakelights and hasty headlights
Of traffic turning at the mini-roundabout
In a kaleidoscopically gyrating quickstep.

Square-eyed pale white gogglebox glazing
Gazes out above the holly-wreathed letterboxes
Of a hundred humdrum hallways
In the squat semi-detached suburbs of Shipley
And twitching behind heavy plush-velvet curtains
Twinkling treelights squint suspiciously
At passing traffic at a kerb-crawl snail pace.

And, above, a cool blue pool of a moon
Swims silently in the plum-purple gloom
Of a dusk-dark deep December evening
While, on high, shining silver, a solitary star
Sighs wistfully, still dreaming of that night
It stood, not above grubby bustling Bradford,
But the breathless anticipation of Bethlehem.