Three Dreams

In the bus station, just after the 3:15 to Chicago leaves from Gate 2,
the girl behind the snack counter picks up a paperback.
Her tight black smock shows off her shapeliness.
Her blond hair glistens in the sunlight, but no one notices.

Her breasts heave regularly as she reads of old Ireland,
the land where Madame N explains to Charlotte, her daughter,
the many reasons why she should not marry the Rumanian Prince,
down on his luck, yet handsome and full of life.

The girl suddenly shifts her head to one side, pulling back a long strand of hair
just in time to notice a young man waiting at the cash register.
“A pack of Camels,” he says, as their eyes meet indifferently.
A recent graduate of Binghamton HS, the young man

is using his travel money from the Navy to return to San Diego as slowly as possible.
There is no one at home who really needs to see him for more than a few hours
and besides he finds that the bus is always filled with vivid subjects for his imagination,
which is more than Binghamton can supply.   No one really minds his daydreaming.

He lights a cigarette and uses the smoke screen to eye an older woman,
slumped in a chair across the way. She is overweight and yet oddly flashy
in her bright flowered dress.    Her mind floats out on an amphetamine cloud
to a party at the Rifle Range pavilion when she was young and

had a pretty thigh to show off to the goggle-eyed boys like the one across the way.
She is secretly undressing herself, feeling her sheer panties, lace bra, and fine hose.
“What is the point,” she wonders, “of dreaming in a bus station, where no one
will ever go anywhere?”   The boy shifts his attention. The girl turns the page.