Leaving On the No. 2 Bus: September 1963
I am standing on the corner of Christian at 16th street
watching and waiting for the No. 2 bus
to take me uptown where I need to go.
Walked pass Miss Lee’s house
down to Tommy’s Barbershop
turned left onto Christian
by the 7th Day Adventists’
walked up to 16th street
straight and tall like I’ve been told
now I’m waiting on the corner
for the No. 2 bus.
Miss Lee was sitting in the window
when I passed her house this morning
pretending to read the daily newspaper.
Miss Lee is always pretending
to read the daily paper
while she watches the block
for the coming and the going.
A dog was barking in the alley.
A dog is always barking in the alley.
Down at Tommy’s Barbershop
the men are gathered on the doorstep
just like they gather every morning
seems like they have no place to go.
They call to me by my family name
since they’ve known me from a little girl.
Some say the men are trifling,
but some say my family’s “striving”
so I pay what some say no mind at all.
Walking to the bus stop
I carry the briefcase Daddy bought me
a big leather Samsonite
like one he always longed to carry
he says I will grow into it.
Mommy washed and pressed
my hair last night
and curled it into a page-boy style
using strips cut from a brown paper bag
black magic passed down
from generation to generation.
Mommy tells me that I’m beautiful,
and just as smart as the white kids
who already go to the uptown school,
that should be all that matters, she says.
I hope that she is right.
Now I’m standing on the corner
of Christian at 16th street
watching and waiting for the No.2 bus
to take me uptown where I need to go.
I’m only two blocks from home
but already I am lost, and wondering
how long it will take me
to grow into this briefcase.
The Scalding
Even then, as now
Me,
running towards affection, with
no regard for blistering waters
no regard for consequences
of burning love.
You,
always across the room
always too far away
even now, as then
busy with the this and that
of life
the women’s work of
babies, and
baths, and
water carried hot
across a room
from stove
to pot
to tub.
Who can even know
what happened next,
though lore’s been passed
from kin to kin
even then, as now.
Me,
they say, a horror of skin
falling free from baby bone
You,
stunned first
into hollow silence
before the howls toward heaven.
Oh, what is pain but love
and love but pain.
Prior to taking a serious interest in poetry, Bernardine (Dine) Watson worked as a social policy writer for major foundations, nonprofits, and media organizations. She has written for The Washington Post, The Ford Foundation, Annie E. Casey Foundation, and Stoneleigh Foundation. Dine’s poetry has been published in the Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Indian River Review,by Darkhouse Books, and by the Painted Bride Art Center. She was a member of 2015-16 class of The DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities’ the Poet in Progress Program, and the 2017 and 2018 classes of the Hurston Wright Foundation’s Summer Writers Week. Dine serves on DC’s Ward 4 Arts and Humanities Committee and on the selection committee for the Takoma Park Third Thursday poetry reading series. She’s read her poetry in venues throughout the DC metropolitan area with More Than A Drum Percussion Ensemble. Dine sits on the board of Day Eight Arts. Her book, Transplant: A Memoir, won the Washington Writers’ Publishing House 2023 nonfiction prize and will be published in October 2023.
Image: Bus shelter and bus stop, Cardiff Road, Newport by Jaggery, CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons