BILL MANHIRE

The Schoolbus

This is the place where the schoolbus turns.
The driver backs and snuffles, backs and goes.
It is always winter on these roads: high bridges
and birds in flight above you all the way.
The heart can hardly stay. The heart implodes.

The heart can hardly stay. The heart implodes.
The body gets down and walks across a field.
There are mushrooms – as in stories,
as in songs. They grow near rabbits. 
Slope of hillside,

slant of rain – and here we are again:
a green-roofed house behind the trees.
The body gets down and walks across a field.
The house is full of homework fed by sleep.
A boy combs his hair, brushes his teeth,

or climbs to the top of the valley.
The sky is handkerchiefs, a single shirt.
He wants to climb higher, into a cloud.
He wants to climb into a cloud.
Whatever else is somewhere up ahead.

The schoolbus is driving through the night.
Whatever else is somewhere up ahead.
A boy keeps on hitting his head.
The small girls sing. It's nothing.
We don't know what we mean.

Is that another drink the man is pouring? 
The boy turns the handle of the separator.
Cream. The boy stands on the railway line, 
disappearing in rust and shine. 
Goodnight Irene. Goodnight Irene.

The big door closes. A voice in the kitchen
says: Enough's enough. Running a bath. 
Always cold water, boiled in pots. 
The driver swears, and then he coughs. 
The big door closes and you can't get off.

Until this year Bill Manhire was series editor for Best New Zealand Poems. Now he is in the happy position of simply being a poet. Recently he has been writing songs with Norman Meehan.

Manhire comments: ‘This poem picks up some true things about my childhood and adds some things that aren't quite true. I guess it has something to do with those moments in childhood when you sense worlds of possibility opening up for you, yet at the same time realise that you've climbed into the great vehicle of your own life, and you probably can't get off.’

Poem source details >

 

Links

Victoria University staff member page
The Arts Foundation author page
Lesley Wheeler interviews the author on Shenandoah
Norman Meehan and Hannah Griffin perform ‘The Hawk’
Norman Meehan and Hannah Griffin perform ‘Making Baby Float’