The wheels on the bus

I sometimes wish I had a great camera. Recently, I've been carrying a disposable point and shoot around with me, one with no potential to take great person shots on a moving bus.

I wanted to capture the people though, bring them home with me and dance with them. I slept most of the way on the bus from Halifax. Each time I woke up, passengers had exited and boarded the bus, allowing me to be surrounded with new faces each time I opened my eyes. By the time we arrived at the Amherst stop, I was wide awake.

A man walked on to the bus and sat behind me. He was a tall and lean, with an African face and a scruffy salt and pepper beard. His eyes were sunk and although not looking unkempt, he appeared as one who uses the bus as his only source of transportation. This man looked like he played a mean saxophone; alto no doubt. He looked like he came straight off the streets of Louisiana, from a nightclub where he performs just for the applause of the few who still come to hear him, and for the memory of the night he met his beautiful wife. She was young and fresh, with stylish black hair, a flowery dress, and a smile on her face. She was sitting next to her girlfriends around a table, drinking milkshakes out of straws, listening to the young man with the magical fingers making the saxophone sing. To him, she stood out. There was no girl as beautiful. As the girls got up to dance on the floor, he watched her, wanting to keep playing the music so that she would keep jiving, keep laughing. He also wished to stop so that he could hopefully work up the courage to walk down onto the floor and ask her what her name was and why she was smiling like that.

As he sat behind me, the man's cell rang. It was that woman from the club years ago, the girl with the smile who danced to his music, and who held his hand, and who kissed his cheek. "I love you, I'll be home soon" said the now older man, in his deep, raspy voice. This was the voice an old, black jazz musician should have, cool and beautiful and mellow.

Ahead of me, sat a woman, and across the aisle from her was a man. They were young, possibly late twenties, and on the aisle seat next to the woman sat a bassinet cradling a beautiful baby boy, no older than six months. As the mother held this baby boy, as she sung to him and held him and fed him and changed him, her love was so beautiful. And the Daddy looked on so proudly. "That's my baby" he said to the elderly woman sitting next to him. The newborn was so good and I barely heard a sound from him. But when he did cry, it was so sweet, so heartbreaking. As he leaned against his mother's shoulder, he looked intensely around. It must be overwhelming as a new person to this world, to drink in all the sights and sounds. He had big beautiful eyes, which sometimes caught mine, and a little smile would form in the creases of his tiny mouth.

I was surrounded by a tapestry of people. There were different colours, different styles, different sounds. It was beautiful and exciting, realizing how unique each life was, and how we managed to find ourselves on the same, quiet bus.