On the Bus

On the bus with the drinkers and the dreamers

And the daffodil and dandelion dandies

I think I just saw Alligator Andy

Speak of poem to a box of wooden matches

Now Andy's up from way down south by Natchez

In Mississippi where he found his luck was lacking

So he chanced upon a ride upon the back roads

With a prayer book and his grandma Emma’s banjo

In Tuscaloosa Andy slept inside a chapel

In a rainstorm by a statue of Saint Daniel

He found a carton full of alabaster angels

And disappeared into a night of crooked angles

Then he walked into the marsh at Loxahatchee

Where he got into a tussle with a caiman

But he walked out with a pair of river fishes

That he cooked upon a fire on a cracked dish

Andy ate beneath a moon of seven wishes

Then he laid down to sleep and thought of seven kisses

He placed upon the lips of one that he was missing

In a summer when his head had started spinning

And so he drifted higher off into the ether

Past Orion and a red dwarf growing deeper

He dreamed he lost the bag of alabaster angels

And had to swim across the Milky Way to get them

Then he gathered up the swimming drifting angels

And he placed them back into the satchel he was toting

Then he turned around and headed back to cold ground

And he stayed asleep until the break of morning

He woke up and noticed that a storm was coming

He scrambled off into a boxcar that was moving

Up to Baltimore he found this train was headed

Then he fell back asleep until the journey ended

And he thought about the red star growing deeper

And he thought about the rings of Saturn glowing

Till the boxcar opened beside an oak tree

Where Andy got out and the city wind was blowing