A battered, straggle-haired man, blazoned blue with tatts, boards our free city-loop bus. Eyes on high beam, facing the long, rubbered aisle, he searches for an empty seat. Feet stutter up the centre. A forefinger touches, wraps hard about a post, keeping his body still against the vehicle’s jerking. He holds for a while. Sinks into the fabric. Pokers to attention. Zeroes in on the bus’s monitor in a glass-glaze stare. Three stops later, he unwinds his whippet-thin body, trudges to the bus door. I imagine him shuffling to a shadowed space beside an illuminated shopfront.

weeds gone to seed
over the garden path—
broken journey

Tony Steven Williams