Even Prompter

The Great Unwashed

The Great Unwashed

Hot breath box,
they called it,
the bus in winter,
the windows steamed
to blur the grey morning
outside,
the snow pock-marked
and speckled black
by the roadside,
a monochrome world
hurrying by
the hunched shadows in seats,
lurching towards the day.


Line count: 13
Free verse
For Promptly Poetry, Week 25, entered for Poetry Contest and Inspiration, January 2022 - Honourable Mention.
Prompt: Riding on the Bus: Write a poem based on a time you’ve traveled by bus – whether a school bus, around town, or a long distance trip to visit a certain destination.
Note: I pondered a long time how to name this poem. It is an account of riding the bus every morning in Coventry in winter, sun not quite risen but a grey sky casting some dismal light upon the world, and we, the workers, trying hard not to think of the day in the factory getting ever nearer. Some worthless toff once described the English working class as “the Great Unwashed” and it came to me as a fairly apt description of us in those moments.