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Greenlink Poetry Project
Ride with Pride and Drive
For Jeremiah Joseph Welch
By Glenis Redmond
Ride. With purpose. With pride.
With drive to get where I am going.
Make connections to a greater whole––
like my father’s watch I wear
on the inside of my wrist just like he did.
He’s gone, but his watch still keeps good time.
Keeps his memory alive and my heartbeats tick to them.
Why do I ride? To get to work. Yes.
Money is necessary, but also for duty.
I take care of family. My mother’s blind.
My father had Stage 4 Lung Cancer.
Still I give back. Catch the bus to donate
plasma twice a week.
Then, off to work I go on Woodruff Road.
Take the 502 or the 506 to the 509 to the 602.
I got drive. Fueled by those who came before me:
Grandfather, father, brother and cousin.
They all fought in wars: Korea, Vietnam,
Afghanistan and the Gulf.
I wear my dreams on my chest:
Make. Everyday. Epic. And I am. I try.
North Greenville College,
not just where I want to go,
but it’s about what I want to be,
a Greenville City Police Officer.
Protect and Serve. Give back.
I will. I’m already doing it.
Look at the back of my hand.
There’s a map of Greenville on it.
Because I ride, I already know this city by heart.
Riding and Stopping Then Riding Again
For Jan LeMay
By Ashley Crout
This is the story of a traveler,
southward each time, until
she led herself towards her
This is the story of a traveler,
southward each time, until
she led herself towards her
family—children of children
who’ve just given birth to a boy,
her great-grandchild, her heart.
When she moved to this place,
she rode every bus line
on every route to tour it, to learn
it like the classes she travels
towards, and back.
Boarding at the third-to-last stop,
she fills herself with the outside
to carry it home. She knows who
in her building is hurting, is
confined by illness, long
seasoned upon the earth. This
woman and her eight decades
of life brings the world to them,
brings the good in herself, what
she can carry, inside to them.
Having reveled in the outdoors
and given to it, loved those
who gathered around her as if
to give welcome. She knows
love is movement towards
each other. So she joined
a community who volunteer to help
those homeless and wandering,
those who can’t afford to ride.
She moves among caregivers
for women who lived in violence,
showing mercy to each human life.
She lets the bus carry her
into her city’s center, into joy,
into the storied skyline—
towards it, always towards it.
Etrulia Tubbs
For Etrulia Tubbs
By Kimberly Simms
She never rode the bus
till after her spouse passed.
Born from a singing family,
from a “count your blessings
one by one to see what the Lord
has done” house. Knit inside
a devout mother, thundering
at the church organ to bear
blessings: Etrulia. Living a good
life in hard times, past toils
& snares, through amazing grace
prayer. From an unreachable star
of loss to bouncing onto the bus
with “Good morning, Everybody.”
Riding on Poinsett Hwy, tuning
into sermons on her earbuds.
Finding a community of passengers,
treating people as if they were
what they ought to be.
Watching the Greenville skyline
change, grow. Sending up prayers
for blessings to flow.
Shapeshift
For Vanessa Rampey
By Kathleen Nalley MooreLately, I’ve been contemplating
the shape of things—how lavender
grows from seed to stem
to flower to elixir for the body. How lilies
divided under the right conditions
yield twice the garden. Some cicadas
await underground for 13 years before
emerging to the air, relinquish their exoskeletons
on the bark of a poplar or oak, become.
Can loss shapeshift? Become something other
than a car wreck? A needle? The inevitable
wilting of the stem from drought?
A greenhouse becomes a heart. A trailer
forms a cocoon. An apartment befits
the blossom. A bus becomes more than a way
to traverse point A to point C. Bus routes pinned on a map
pattern a constellation of time and space and need.
Strangers morph into friends. Friends into lovers,
lovers like lavender stalks standing alongside
one another, surging toward the sun.
Cicadas tell us: swarming is a survival strategy.
In this life, love has been the gift.
David Rides the Bus
For David Finley
By John Pursley & Sarah BlackmanDavid rides the bus and Tasty stays home, her little c—seed?
cede?—of catholic interest
framed in window glass. David
rides the bus: Easley to San
Francisco, Bozeman and back,
flirting quantum physics in the
1840s, the Book of Exodus—a Tale
of Two Cities. David rides
the bus to get work done—David
and the driver discussing local
news, Dead Kennedys and Zappa,
Hebraic poems, a certain cat’s
scruff “redolent of a very tasty
pastry,” Mozart, instruments
with fretted strings. David
rides the bus for balance,
dignity, the freedom of his
sisters — all grandmothers now —
to love him from a distance.
David rides the bus in algebraic
grids, an improvisation along
the fretwork of routes. Fresh
wood sorrel sprouts along the
fence lines David passes, framed
in window glass.
Greenlink
For Travis Brock
By Amber Sherer
Her name is Travis.
What do you know about a family name?
Her ville is Green.
Her profession is Mom
and she found a way
when life happened to her,
to make it work.
Ain’t that a mama for you?
She found a Greenlink: a hub of transit
to transport her from point A to point B.
She’s got that kind of mind
that keeps entire routes,
locations and schedules in it.
She’s got a homegrown GPS:
Global Positioning System.
Greenville Positioning System.
God’s Positioning System.Her presence so big,
everybody knows her name.
A spirit so grand, she might as well
be driving the bus,
but sometimes Life will tell you
it’s okay to sit down
and let someone drive you.
Travis, you deserve it.
You’re worthy of safety and reliability.
I will get you where you need to be
through rain, sleet, and shine.
All you have to do,
Is make it to the stop on time.
The Art of Riding the Bus:
A Tribute to Jessica Majerus
For Jessica Majerus
By Starry Walker
Remember that you have a lot to be proud of.
Buy an Extra ticket so that your pride can sit next to you.
Never leave it behind.
It has been a long journey in this life.
It has not been easy.
You are Woman. Mother. Grandmother. Survivor.
You were born tired but not too tired to keep going.
Not too tired to keep fighting for the freedom that you deserve.
Take out your headphones. Go to YouTube
and play Kevin Gates “I Don’t Get Tired”
This song will be a mantra,
a reminder that we must speak things
as we want them to be. Not as they are.Go into your bookbag, pull out your mixed media art journal.
A place where you keep the found things
that most people would throw away.
It echoes the beauty within you
and runs parallel to the legacy
that you will leave behind for your granddaughter.
It will show her that things may look ugly in the beginning
but as long as you don’t give up on yourself
they will always turn out beautiful in the end.
Just as you have had to fall in love with yourself.
Fall in love with the butterflies
that you see flying outside of the bus window.
Know that they are a part of your tribe.
Like the butterfly you have had
one hell of a journey finding your wings.
Let go and let God take the steering wheel
of this bus that’s on the road to redemption.
Follow the God Trail
For Jan LeMay
By Anna Castro Spratt
God created light, & Connecticut,
& her great grandson in Carolina.
She is an observer, eyes wide open
on every ride back home— & a storyteller
since sixteen, when she’d grind her fantasies
into the meals on her father’s plate:
Food that she passed down the dinner table
to her father & her husband (her soulmate),
loved him so much she’d kiss him
even when his lips bled.Followed the drip-trail around in circles
until they straightened out
into one real pathway to heaven.
Let her tell you her rules, her commandments,
beginning with always keep your eyes open
so they can lock easily with the girl across from you,
sitting, sealed to her seat & the man next to her.
Parallel to each other, they are just two women.
Do you hear the divinity in that word?
Listen for it— always listen faithfully—
and let the wheels of this divinity hold you.