I Saw Myself on the Dudley Bus That Day

I saw myself on the Dudley bus that day
his eyes: a blinking, flirt
with the mid-winter’s sun-
watching
the slow, fade
of a dying afternoon,
his face shadowed
in five o’clock.

Half light,
no hair.
A bus of exiles
each mired
in their personal
affairs.

And that man
perhaps me
looked a million
miles away.
I believe I saw
him briefly yesterday,
and for a first time
on that day
we saw each other
and quickly
turned away.

 

Doug Holder moved to Boston in 1973 to attend college and has basically lived here ever since. His work has appeared in The Boston Globe, The Boston Globe Magazine, The Fenway News, Stuff at Night, Arts Around Boston , 96inc. and many others. For over 20 years Holder has run poetry groups for psychiatric patients at McLean Hospital–outside of Boston. He also teaches writing at Bunker Hill Community College in Boston.