Subway from the West Side

From a distance I got my hopes up
He was praying or at least was bent in misery.
Two trains came roaring in, all screeching brakes

And other commotion they can make.
The traffic on the uptown side, not one
Where I had come to be.

The delay was no affair of his. He had his focus
Where it belonged, not on God or personal woes
But Herman Hesse, as I saw when I drew near.

Some years ago a girl from blocks away
Instructed me to make Siddhartha mine.
I could have told him how now she walked

The earth with tissues in her ears to block
What people had to say or of the ferry
From Dover to Calais and the news she broke

Amid the channel spray of a genius friend
Better in bed than I could ever be.
Or the grade school that had brought me

To this subway stop with the burden
Of a weeping mother on my thin back.
I could have told him of the past I live with

And so seldom see and how only the cover,
Not the content, of his book is within my memory.
You might wonder why it is that I might want

A young man coupling with the divine
And I could ask myself the same.
The thing is I had a bag in tow and had been thinking,

On first sight, that I had found a friend.
A train is really the eye of God
On the ground established

As its domain. Does it need
To be said that he not once
So much as looked my way?

August 2003