After seeing
"South Bronx, NYC 1979" by Danny Lyon at the Bowdoin Museum
Poles
reach
from dark
floor to dark
ceiling; they live in,
own this place. Brass gleams from the touch
of riders holding themselves upright as the train rocks
and
sways.
Getting
on and off,
strangers pack so close
they tilt their heads away to stare
out windows at tunnel walls speeding alongside.
They
try
so hard
to avoid
apparent trespass
on the lives of other riders.
This interregnum, this time-out time, is squeezed between
the
end
and start
of the ride
Only the crackle
of a newspaper page turning,
a short censored cough, prevents the scene from becoming
still
life.
If two
children burst
in, race from one end
of the car to the other, whoop
as they hang on and chug around the poles, the riders
might
dare
to stare
at each other,
shake their heads from side
to side at the hubbub made by
children who don't know the rules of civil behavior
yet.
