Transcript

I’m Ada Limón and this is The Slowdown.

When I was a teenager, I first discovered the joys of taking the bus. The freedom it allowed me as I was first permitted to travel to Santa Rosa all by myself to meet friends for a movie. I remember the glee of packing my bag and bringing all the things I needed in case of emergencies, the freedom of thinking I could get anywhere. The freedom to have my own agency to determine my destination.

What I also loved was the feeling of traveling together, with so many unknown people from all over toward our singular stopping places. I’d make up stories about strangers and sing to myself that song, “America” by Simon & Garfunkel, off their 1968 album Bookends, that had the lyrics:

Laughing on the bus
Playing games with the faces
She said the man in the gabardine suit was a spy
I said "Be careful, his bowtie is really a camera"

I liked that game too, the game with the faces. I’d think about who was related to me. Their histories, their long stories, their place of origin. Once, when I was in college, I became sick and feverish with strep throat while camping with my dad and stepmom at Mount St. Helens, so I rode the bus three hours home. I sat next to a woman who looked a lot like me. She took pity on me and bought me a grape soda at the rest stop while I slept with my head pressed up against the window, the whole landscape of trees and mountains a blur in my hazy state.

She was a member of the Samish Indian Nation and we talked about how my grandfather was from Mexico and I said that his tribe was the Tarascan, now called the Púrepecha in Michoacán. And she liked that I knew my indigenous roots in Mexico. She bought me another grape soda and I drank it like there was nothing better in the world. Her kindness was overwhelming. She told me how important it was to honor our ancestors with the lives we live now and in my feverish state I promised over and over that I’d do just as she told me. When she got off the bus, I didn’t want her to leave. We never exchanged numbers, I don’t even remember her name. But I’ll never forget our encounter.

Today’s poem centers on a moment of witnessing someone along their journey. I love this poem for its clarity and its tenderness to the woman boarding the bus.

For the Korean Grandmother on Sunset Boulevard
by Christine Kitano

So you are here. Night comes as it does
elsewhere: light pulls slowly away
from telephone posts, shadows of buildings
darken the pavement like something
spilled. Even the broken moon
seems to turn its face.
And again you find yourself
on this dark riverbed, this asphalt
miracle, holding your end of a rope
that goes slack when you tug it.
Such grief you bear alone.
But wait. Just now a light
approaches, its rich band draws 
you forward, out of shadow.
It is here, the bus that will ferry
you home. Go ahead,
grandmother, go on.

"For the Korean Grandmother on Sunset Boulevard" by Christine Kitano from SKY COUNTRY copyright © 2017 Christine Kitano. Used by permission of Boa Editions.