Memphis Bus Driver
In the streets of downtown Memphis, I felt the old happiness
Of fellowship with humanity—with the tall blonde waitress
At the Peabody Hotel, who served me my breakfast
With a soft angularity, and with the scruffy old hippie
At the Funky Junk Antique Store, who thanked me profusely
Just for dropping in. And I took it in graciously, charmed
By their grace and generosity. But it was the dignified driver
Of the downtown Memphis local, a couple of hours later,
On my way back from Graceland after an unsuccessful visit,
Who made me the happiest, evoking my agape, that feeling
Of unconditional love for just about everybody
That I’d been hoping to find in the citizenry, if not in myself,
Since arriving by bus from New Madrid, Missouri.
It was that sweet chunky black guy whose belt divided his belly roll,
Who swerved to the curb and stopped with a squeak of the brakes
When he saw me waiting at the gate of Graceland
With a look of grave disappointment on my white northern face—
Not just because he hissed open the door of the bus
And gestured for me to jump aboard and let my worldly coins
Jangle in his hopper, nor because he brought to mind
The later Muddy Waters whom I’d seen in those pictures
On the faded covers of blues-infused rock albums commissioned
By shaggy British invaders with electric guitars,
And not because he was the kind of down-home brother
You like to see in public, thigh-slapping and high-fiving,
Joning and jiving and doin’ the dozens, with little regard
For the local customs—and not even because he said,
Turning to me from the driver’s seat, when I asked him what I ought
To see, what I ought to do, what I ought to spend the day
Exploring in Memphis, now that I’d found Elvis’s house
Closed on Mondays and holidays, “You could check out the site
Of Reverend King’s assassination, or you could git yourself some ribs
And grab yourself a beer at a bar up on Beale Street.”
And not just because he followed those two recommendations
With a practical suggestion, a piece of avuncular advice,
As if I hadn’t been jumped in the street before or had a doting mother:
“Better use your head wherever you go in Memphis, brother,
Cuz like my mama done said to me when I was just a kid,
They’s some mighty unhappy folks on the streets of this city
Sufferin’ from the inability to give or receive pity.“
But because what he said he said with such class and authority,
In that voice that could have melted the butter on my bread.
Bio:
Scott’s recent poems have appeared in Agni Online, Poetry Quarterly, Zymbol, Tower Journal, Naugatuck River Review, Dalhousie Review, and In My Bed. His 2009 chapbook, “Sidewalk Tectonics,” takes the reader on a road-trip from Lincoln’s birthplace to the site of M.L. King’s assassination. His new chapbook of poems, “Perfect Memory,” includes poems set in Central America, Central Ohio, Central Square (in Cambridge, Mass), and elsewhere. He works for the Arts in Education program at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and teaches part-time in the Boston University Prison Education Program.