The big yellow monster
A former bus driver from Penobscot anthropomorphizes his vehicle
Sept. 1, 2026
Photo by Unsplash.
Students were back at school this week across the Blue Hill Peninsula. Lin Parker of Penobscot, who drove the local school bus for about a decade, recently performed a song he wrote about the morning and afternoon pick ups. Sue Shaw, also of Penobscot, heard the song and submitted it’s lyrics to The Rising Tide on Parker’s behalf with his blessing.
No Child Left Behind
By Lin Parker
The big yellow monster starts making its rounds…
Gobbling up the kiddies by ounces and pounds!
With scary, red eyes, winking and blinking…
“No child left behind”…that's what it's thinking.
(Chorus)
No child left behind,
No child left behind,
The big yellow monster has one thing in mind,
No child left behind.
This big yellow thing is longer than wide.
Has horns on its snout and a mouth on the side.
With a wand of a tongue to pre-taste each catch,
And one blinking flipper in need of a match.
Chorus
The monster goes bouncing and rockin’ and rollin’…
Indigestion sets in, the kiddies are boilin’!
At the schoolyard, it stops, and barely can wait
To blink and to belch and to regurgitate.
Chorus
By 2:30 it’s feeling a big hunger pang,
So it gulps up and swallows the whole wiggly gang!
Back to the road it snorts and it rumbles
Munching on kiddies and chewing on crumbles.
Chorus
And stopping every mile, one two or three,
It spits out each morsel, setting them free.
‘Til it's empty and hollow and several pounds light,
The monster then pauses to rest for the night.
Chorus
Even the driver, too old and too fat
Gets rejected, ejected….spit out with a splat!
This unwieldy creature which really can't eat,
Drink drinks gallons of diesel, it's favorite treat.
Chorus
Next morning at Dawn, it wakes from its snooze,
Ready to gobble by ones or by twos.
And so it goes each day after day…
From early September till well after May.
Chorus
The big yellow monster keeps making its rounds,
Gobbling up kiddies by ounces and pounds.
With scary, red eyes, winkin’ and blinkin’,
“No child left behind”, that's what it's thinking!
Chorus
The Rising Tide welcomes poems and other artistic endeavors from our community, and showcases them here in our “Create” section. If you have something you’d like to submit—a poem, a picture of a painting, a photograph, a music recording—send it to info@risingtide.media. We’d love to publish it and give you an audience for your creativity.
