Dave Bonta's "Commute" captures the strange crowding of getting to and from work. The road, the speaker says, "places us" in a bedlam, as if we don't choose it but are simply dropped into the chaos. The sounds are human and rough: oaths and whistles, bodies that seem to argue even when no one is speaking. The phrase "the several ways to ride / to home and to office" is flat and practical, listing options the way a timetable would, which makes the whole routine feel mechanical.
Then the poem turns. The last two lines, "and the land / in back of us," shrink to almost nothing on the page. Judging by the placement, the land is something we pass and leave behind, perhaps a quieter, older world that the commute has pushed out of view. The speaker doesn't say they miss it, but the pause and the sudden hush suggest a faint ache. The mood is restless and noisy, then quietly wistful.