Stay

Stay

The muse is a lovely thing
Like a well spring
Appearing
With water out of the grass and earth
Like a benediction

Just saw a poem about a bus driver -
Actually it is a film on a city bus driver
Who is a poet

And his wife, a real beauty
And their opinionated bulldog Marvin

Who eats up the sole poetry notebook-
-The bus driver does not write all that much
He is thoughtful and careful
And keeps no copies

His poems in that solitary notebook are gone
But not the poetry inside him-

A Japanese visitor from Osaka to Paterson New Jersey
Appears in the final minutes
Of the final reel
 As if digital films still had reels
They don't even use celluloid now

Some of us call them films
Who don't always  remember to call them movies

But they definitely don't have reels anymore.

The Japanese Poet is poetic licence
Comes in just like that
Only to deliver his message

Very charming
Says Excuse Me every time before he says anything


Dressed in a  white shirt blue suit and tie
Like a typical Japanese company man
With large black rimmed glasses and a shock of black side parted hair
They are also extinct-
No lifetime employment now-
But  this one has a leather satchel
Not a briefcase

A poet in Japanese himself
Knowledgeable about American poets too
He knows about all the poets from Paterson New Jersey
Over the years-

Mentions names the bus driver knows
Comments on their work styles

Strange how the place produced so many-

And apparently
And this is from the bar
The bus driver goes to
While Marvin has to wait outside
And make sure he is not dog napped-

The Costello in Abbot and Costello
And both Sam And Dave
The popular music stars
Are all from Paterson

The blue suited Japanese poet gives  the bus driver another blank note book
And off goes Paterson from Paterson
The poet cum bus driver
Started up again
After being very devastated for a night-

He  promptly writes another poem just before the closing credits
Right there
Sitting on the bench opposite the waterfall
Like he does on his bus driver seat
In the moments before starting on his route
Early in the morning

Or when he eats his sandwich lunch his wife packs in his Stanley lunch box
At the same bench
On any weekday

He starts again
After the Japanese man leaves

Paterson the bus driver
Who is named after his town
And carries a pen in his jacket
Even on a Sunday
His day off
But he's wearing his work a day denim bus driver jacket
That he always wears
And which carries his ball pen

Paterson who lives in Paterson
And was sitting on a bench  looking at a  waterfall
Mourning the loss of his poetry book
Thanks to Marvin the dog
Only a few minutes ago

Marvin the bulldog
Whom the pretty wife has exiled to live in the garage
And not on the couch in the living room anymore
The dog needs to mend his attitude-

Paterson  recovers
When
The Japanese poet came and sat beside the bus driver from Paterson
Beside him
Who was born there
The day before he was returning to Osaka

But not before saying Paterson had  produced
Several other famous poets
As if the bus driver who made no copies of his dog eaten notebook
Was already famous

Some
Said the Japanese poet
Who had lived there all their lives
And some who had spent time there
Allen Ginsberg, the beat poet was amongst them
And another grown famous later from the "New York School"-

The lost copy book
Chewed up by Marvin the bulldog

Even though his beautiful wife with premonition
Kept asking him to
Make copies

The dog was angry
For being left behind
When the bus driver and his wife went out for a weekend dinner
And an old black and white horror movie
At the Mall

A celebration-
Because the wife makes cupcakes
With black and white icing-

And sells them all at a  church fair or weekend bazaar
For the first time

But it could well turn into a little business for her
The Cupcake Queen of Paterson
The bus driver husband calls her-
Proudly
For selling $273 worth at her first attempt

She, Laura, likes everything to be Black & White
Her harlequin guitar that she orders
Because she is learning

And wants to be a Country Singer
Black and White, curtains, rugs,
Almost everything in the house
And all her clothes-

Paterson the bus driver loves her so dearly
That he loves anything she says and does
And cooks-

And she loves him and his poetry-
And says he's as good a poet
As any that he reads aloud
And admires.

June 12th, 2020
Gautam Mukherjee