I’m not sure what happened in my late forties, but all of a sudden young people started offering me their seats on the bus. And cashiers gave me seniors’ discounts. Now, in and of themselves, these are wonderful things. But context is everything and I was a bit disconcerted. What was going on?

That question became the subject of today’s poem. Here’s the first version:

What Remains on a Face?

Seats appear at 50 from youth
who don’t surrender easily. What lines
do they read on a face alone
with itself, a face that thinks
it’s shuttered. Night must
seep out, the kind that curls
around ankles and pulls
you down. How to hide then?
How to carry the tinkle of bells
in a green field, the whiteness
of daisies in grass? She doesn’t
know, rearranges her lips blindly.

My first edit was simply about pruning. I liked this poem right off (and when I wrote it, I wasn’t liking much I was writing), but I could see the need for tightening. And a new title. I decided to have a play on words, one that gives an (impossible) observer’s stance. I want the poem to give a sense of the narrator trying to observe herself from the outside, to figure out what others see.

Seen on a Bus

Seats appear at fifty from youth
who don’t surrender. What lines
are read on a face alone with itself,
a face that thinks: shuttered. Night
must slip out, the kind that curls
round ankles and pulls. How to hide
then? How to convey the tinkle of bells
in a field, the whiteness of daisies
against grass? She doesn’t know,
rearranges her lips blindly.

Okay. That was much better. And I was feeling happy. I loved the images of the tinkling of bells in a field, the whiteness of daisies against grass. Every time I read them, they made me happy.

Then I realized I was having a Sound of Music moment. I was channelling my inner Maria. My narrator was 50, for pete’s sake, not an 80 year old Swiss immigrant remembering being a milkmaid in the Alps.

So I cut those images. Yup. They were inappropriate in this poem. My narrator wanted to convey normality, she wanted to look professional.

Here’s the final version. I still like it. Which isn’t to say it won’t get edited again.

Seen on a Bus

Seats appear at fifty from youth
who don’t surrender. What lines
are read on a face alone with itself,
a face that thinks: shuttered. Night
must slip out, the kind that curls
round ankles and pulls. How to hide
then? How to convey the tidiness
of a desk, the neatness of files
against wood? She doesn’t know,
rearranges her lips blindly.