Another Poem for April

The Bus Driver

Everybody wanted to ride Charlie’s bus.

Little and yellow, it was first in line,

first to leave the junior high

and climb the hill to the high school.

We called it the crackerbox.

The boys cracked jokes with Charlie,

who always one-upped them

in his exotic Oklahoma accent

while winking at the girls.
The same lock of curly black hair
always escaped from under his cowboy hat
to tickle one eyebrow.

I knew his daughter fairly well,

went out once or twice with his son,

but never knew—none of us knew—

that he had a wife who never left the house

and that he drove the bus

(to supplement his army pension)

because it left him free most of the day

for her.

He loved that woman and she

loved only him and her dogs.

When he died she retreated into one room
with the dogs.

Some hippies bought the crackerbox,

painted it purple and drove it to the coast.

His wife moved back to Oklahoma.

She has beautiful long silver hair now,
cascading down her back,

and she never speaks to anyone

but the dogs.

This prompt was one from Poetic Asides (see previous post), to "pick a type of person and write a poem about him or her. To help set the scene, you may want to title your poem as who the type of person is. For instance, you could write a poem titled "Firefighter," "Cynic," "Optimist," "Teacher," "2-year-old," etc. The list is endless."  I chose "bus driver."