Elevator and Bus

With strangers, she stepped

into an elevator to be lifted.
Doors closed, doors opened:

onto a bus where she sat
riding with new strangers.
"I didn't want this," she said

to a gray-haired woman.
"No one does," said the woman.
Then everyone began to sing

a song she did not know.
"I'm scared," she said to
a weary, kind brown man.

"It is all right," he said.
"This is the bus we're on,
and all of us are frightened?

hans ostrom, 2025

The Down Escalator

We recently stayed at a hotel in Hollywood that gives the appearance of being designed on the model of a London hotel, so (for example) the signs for what Americans call "elevators" say "lifts."

As far as I can tell, the British call "escalators" "escalators." I have to say (well, I don't really have to) that "lift" is pretty impressive. It's so simple. And it does describe what the machine does to (for) you--if you're going up, that is, and if the machine is working properly. This escalator-poem was first written in Canada, not Hollywood or Britain, though, if memory serves. So it goes.


The Down Escalator

A sign specifies I ought to stand right or walk
left. Standing right, moving, and thus moving
as I stand, I take this escalator, which takes
me--down, against the grain of its name.

Ahead I see the floor inhale grooved metal
steps insatiably. The ingested steps fall
into an abyss, which I escape undramatically
by getting off a step just before it vanishes.

The momentum of moving while standing
right makes my first stride betray over-
compensation. A slight hint of stagger mars
my gait. I proceed to plod without the escalator.

Copyright 2009 Hans Ostrom