Bangor to Holyhead by bus

There are no plumy accents
when traveling by coach,
just ordinary people
going about extraordinary lives.
The bus grinds through
small, forgotten villages,
stops for elderly women
with rheumy eyes dragging
plaid shopping trolleys,
stops for old men
under flat woolen caps,
hearing aids at odd angles
whistling in their hairy ears,
stops for weary young mums
with impossibly complex prams.
We bump by sodden fields of sheep,
into market towns no longer
proffering produce, only plastic.
Yet three times on this journey
I have seen standing stones,
great, gray plinths alone in fields,
reminders of time immemorial,
reminders there is more
than what appears to be.
They watch us hurtle by.