Stanza 1 Summary

Lines 1-2

Once riding in old Baltimore,
   Heart-filled, head-filled with glee, 

• "Incident" begins pretty simply by setting the scene. The speaker begins to tell us that "once" he was riding a bus in Baltimore.
• The "once" signals that this bus-riding moment was pretty far in the past. (You usually don't use the word "once" to talk about what happened to you yesterday.) The speaker is definitely launching into a story here. (Once upon a time, anyone?) 
• And when he was riding that bus "once," he was "heart-filled, head-filled with glee." In other words, these were some good times! The little dude was gleeful in his heart and mind, both emotionally and intellectually. There's a lot to take in when you're a kid riding a bus around Baltimore. 
• Do you notice those repeated H sounds in "heart" and "head"? There's some heavy-duty alliteration going on, which, in this instance, feels pretty fun to us. The boy feels gleeful, and this alliteration makes us feel it too. 
• Also, we know you haven't read too much of the poem yet, but spoiler alert: this baby's written in what we poetry folks like to call ballad meter. It's a very, very old form of poetry that alternates lines of iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter. 
• Do those terms have you shaking in your boots? You can head over to our "Form and Meter" section for the nitty gritty on ballad meter. For now, you just need to know the basic rhythm of the ballad meter, which goes a little somethin' like this:
  daDUM daDUM daDUM daDUM
  daDUM daDUM daDUM
• Or, in other words:
  Once riding in old Baltimore
  Heart-filled, head-filled with glee
• The poem's ballad meter relates it to a lot of classic American poems (we're looking at you, Emily Dickinson), but it also relates it to music. Ballad meter is a very jaunty, upbeat form. Don't believe us? Check out our favorite example of ballad meter in song here.

Lines 3-4

I saw a Baltimorean
   Keep looking straight at me.

• So, back to the bus. The speaker says, in a simple and straightforward manner, that he sees a Baltimorean (that's somebody who from Baltimore) looking at him. 
• But let's dig deeper. His exact words are that he saw "a Baltimorean / Keep looking straight at me [our emphasis]." Notice that word "keep"? It implies that the Baltimorean was looking at him for a long time. This wasn't a quick glance; it was a sustained look. This story's getting intriguing: why the long glance, Baltimorean? 
• Before we move on, let's take a moment to think about form. We've got a continuation of our good pal ballad meter, and we've also got an example of our old friend ABCB rhyme, which usually accompanies ballad meter. 
• This means that the second and fourth lines of each quatrain rhyme ("glee" and "me" in the first stanza), while the first and third lines don't. Those guys can do whatever they darn well please.