View from the Bus

We stare through steamy windows on the top deck of the bus,
at people walking and waiting in the rain, unlike us,
impatient with the crowds and the weather,
while we steam in the proximity of bodies crammed together.
We open a window to let in some air, and petrichor fills the air,
punctuated by a curl of tobacco smoke, a smoker’s rising prayer.
Windows of shops and offices close their blinds like eyes,
cleaners finish work, shut up and say their goodbyes.
Out of the city centre, lights blink on, windows yield scenes
of children eating, doing homework, staring at screens.
Aromas change to evening meals and perfume from the young
heading out to meet some friends, their evening has begun.
Lovers hold hands at the table as they eat;
an elderly woman and her dog look out at the street,
wondering if the rain will stop so they can go out for a walk;
petty quarrels and making-up of couples who need to talk.
The faces behind the windows don’t realise, they can’t see us,
that we see (and smell) so much from the top deck of the bus.

Kim M. Russell, 11th March 2025

Image by Gogomoe on Unsplash

This Tuesday at the dVerse Poets Pub, Dora is our host for Poetics, with the romance of the open window.

Dora says that she’s ‘ready to throw open every window’ and ‘welcome in the spring air to banish every lingering trace of the winter doldrums’, and goes on to explain that the quote from Saki, with which she’s opened her prompt, got her thinking about ‘one of the most prevalent tropes in literature and art, that of the open window’.

She has given plenty of examples, in both art and poetry, to inspire us to use the trope of the open window in our poetry, and asks: What happens when we open a window? What vistas of the heart and mind, of our senses and perceptions lighten or preoccupy us? Do we hear bells or wind chimes from afar, sounds of a bygone time, catch the scent of wild wisteria, or the music of distant drums or a primeval surge of life?

I used to love the bus-ride home on dark evenings, there was always so much to see in the illuminated windows of suburbia.

38 thoughts on “View from the Bus”

  2. You make the romance of the journey home on the bus come alive, Kim, with sights, smells, and sounds. I’ve never ridden a double-decker but you help me imagine how it might be, peeking at the lives that pass by. I love “Windows of shops and offices close their blinds like eyes” and “petrichor fills the air,
    punctuated by a curl of tobacco smoke, a smoker’s rising prayer” — Beautifully atmospheric.

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  3. In neighborhoods around our house, only one out of ten houses leaves their blinds open day or night; we’re one of the few. No wonder so many people out walking their dogs gawk into the kitchen window when I’m cooking dinner! Love the traffic here of window scenes, how the intimacies of urban life are shared.

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    1. Thanks Brendan. My husband is paranoid about shutting the curtains before I turn the lights on. Having lived in Germany and, for a short while in Holland, where most people don’t have curtains, it doesn’t bother me.

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  7. You did not judge, did not condemn, just noticed every assault on the senses or activity outside the bus window, leaving the reader to pick up underlying emotion or tension, which I really like. The differences between inside and outside the window was very-well evocated, and the structure all flowed…v nice Kim. I felt the visual went well, and it is really best put at the end.

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    1. Thank you, Ain. It was all from memory. I haven’t lived in London for 33 years. I don’t really miss it, just a few things, like sitting on the top deck of buses and watching the world go by. It’s very static where I live now and there’s not much change.

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  9. As someone who took the bus–though not an English double decker!–to and from work for years, this struck home for me. I always loved watching the familiar route through the window on the way home. (Mornings, I was too dazed to do anything but try to stay awake and not miss my stop!)

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  13. I loved sitting on the top deck of the bus in Glasgow, and you can see so much. You’ve brought such a bus ride to life in your poems, all the goings on of people busily going about their lives. Thank you for the bus ride Kim and the memories 🙂

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