The Summer-Camp Bus Pulls Away from the Curb

Sharon Olds

(1942 - )

The Summer-Camp Bus Pulls Away from the Curb

Whatever he needs, he has or doesn’t

have by now.

Whatever the world is going to do to him

it has started to do. With a pencil and two

Hardy Boys and a peanut butter sandwich and

grapes he is on his way, there is nothing

more we can do for him. Whatever is

stored in his heart, he can use, now.

Whatever he has laid up in his mind

he can call on. What he does not have

he can lack. The bus gets smaller and smaller, as one

folds a flag at the end of a ceremony,

onto itself, and onto itself, until

only a heavy wedge remains.

Whatever his exuberant soul

can do for him, it is doing right now.

Whatever his arrogance can do

it is doing to him. Everything

that’s been done to him, he will now do.

Everything that’s been placed in him

will come out, now, the contents of a trunk

unpacked and lined up on a bunk in the underpine light.

This one warrants more than one reading and some discussion with friends who also have children. Generally, parents would like to provide their children with a smooth path in life. That's not always possible. As the summer-camp bus pulls away from the curb a parent wrestles with what they imagine awaits their child and what they cannot do for him. They've done all they can and now must hope that it is enough. The poem could as easily be about driving your child to college for the first time.

About the poet: Sharon Olds is an American poet. She won the first San Francisco State University Poetry Center Award in 1980, the 1984 National Book Critics Circle Award, and the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. She teachers creative writing at New York University and is a previous director of the Creative Writing Program at NYU.