Waiting on a Train

New York city subways are
a world unto themselves.
If you grow up in the city,
it's as though you're a fish
and the subways are your water.
When I think back on life
in New York, the subway comes
first to my mind, the sweaty
trains of summer, the sardine
packed trains of rush hour,
the solitary, stark trains of
after hours. Above all,
the most important aspect of
the trains is that there is
no back of the bus,
there is no old-boys' network,
there is no white car.
On a subway train, we are all
truly in this together. I remember
my life switched on and off
as I entered or exited
the subway system, or so
it seemed. Busy people, petty politics,
terrible for-real politics, ugh,
no thanks. Give me the subway and
you give me a substrate
through which I can
demonstrably live,
through which I can
come to terms with
the innumerable faces of humanity,
in which I can discern sometimes
the makings of my own humanity.
I feel the lack of subways in
my bones. All these years
I've been a fish out of water,
I've been a maladjusted fish
waiting on a train that might never come.

(2008)