Stop
the bus driver says it’s really nice
to see the children in the park
it’s been such
a wet winter
and it’ll do them good to get some real
fresh air, he points out
he’s wearing shades
but he’s not vain it’s only because
of all the dust it’s too much
and his skin gets flaky, red,
he should
probably use a moisturiser
but don’t tell anyone he said that
to nobody in particular ……… anyone
who will listen, he’s
ahead
of schedule with time
on his mind, going as slow
as he can, and most
of all
he wonders
why it is the CCTV camera
on the long pole outside
the massive police complex
on Paisley Road West
is always looking out towards
the trees in the park, it sometimes
swivels a click to the left ………. he wonders
if maybe the operator is
a bird watcher and someday soon
he’s going to stop and go right on in
and ask, yes, someday soon
he’s going to stop, and ask
About this poem
This poem was included in Best Scottish Poems 2021. Best Scottish Poems is an online publication, consisting of 20 poems chosen by a different editor each year, with comments by the editor and poets. It provides a personal overview of a year of Scottish poetry. The editor for 2021 was Hugh McMillan.
Editor’s notes:
The funny, surreal and downright crazy voice is an undervalued one. Brent Hodgson was one. Shug Hanlan is one and so is Graham Fulton whose poems often read like verbatim records of what he’s heard on the Drumchapel Bus. His poems have the flow and cadences of normal speech, or at least the type of normal speech punctuated by swigs of Lanliq or whatever the modern equivalent is, Buckie I suppose. A bus is a proper place for a poet, and Fulton is the proper poet for a bus, meticulously recording the occasional hopelessness and blazing humanity of the passengers, or, in this case, the driver.
Author’s note:
I was on the bus to Glasgow and the driver was doing a running commentary of the journey to no one, himself, and I found it quite funny and touching so I remembered some of the things he said and wrote them down later and got a flowing rhythm but with strange line breaks to give an unsettled feeling and put a pause in the middle when he paused his bus; a little individual in the landscape trying to communicate, trying to make some sense of his life and our lives, ugliness, beauty, but not really knowing anything, and knowing that it doesn’t matter.
