The night bus driver

do you remember

the cutting winds

that sliced through

the slits

of the wind-screen of the night bus

as you huddled inside your jacket,

the limbs of the stranger on the next seat,

dearer than the ones you'd just said goodbye to?

do you remember

how the morning light waited

on the baited breath

of the wee-hour travellers,

who skipped the darkness of the night

to make a passageway for you

into dawn?

their hands searched

fires

lighted by the road-side vendors,

as the jogis smoked their pipes

and struck chords

of solitude in disarray

their feet,

stiff with chilblains,

knocked the frost on the grass

to kick-start another life

their tongues,

burnt with a small lie,

searched for a reason

to purge

and their eyes

squinted at the sparse hint of light,

as the December morning

stretched

like the open, open grazed fields

you drove across Jhapa

just as the night bus drew closer

to the journey's end.

Lindia Benningfield 

Early Morning