Part 2 of a series.

original poetry

It was 1966 and I was a college student in New York City, at the City College Of New York, in Harlem. ! was dependent on public transit. And on my parents.  I was about to grow up.

Take The  A Train

©3/23/02srk all rights reserved

1966

My dad left me on the platform of the A train

on my first day of classes.  My mother told him,

“Jack, take her.”  The truth was

I had never traveled on the train myself.

It was early in the morning

when the Chiclets smiled yellow, red, and green

from the vending machines,

and the bums hunted dimes in the

pay phones.

Then, like science fiction, the train

slowed at the platform and,

the doors slid open and took me in.

Into a car that was strangely empty

for 14th Street in the morning.

I sat in a two-seater with the side of my forehead

leaning against stale glass.

At 42nd Street the doors reeled in

a large man, carrying a camel colored coat over his heavy arm;

he caught me

and wedged me tighter into my corner;

then, a weight,

on my thigh.

Though under the cover of the coat,

his hand was visible in my mind,

and translated into the language of

heat  and teeth and claws

and gills and scales; a bottom feeder

at rest, with its red eyes open.

I knew it would be soon

before its pressure

would shift,

and it would

bisect me.

At 59th Street, a crowd entered,

the lights blinked, and in darkness

we sped express to Harlem,

to 125th Street:

I was a small, bivalve urchin, stuck,

snapped shut,

tied down by seaweed and algae,

and drowning in an ocean of fear.

When I saw someone familiar,

my head drained of salt water;

I wiped my eyes,

my shell opened, released me,

I grew legs,

and with a shove,

and a rush

I was at the doors, devoured by a crowd

of other seventeen year olds,

who would trek up the South Campus Hill

and have English 101

for breakfast.

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Yahoo comments:

This was amazing! I was so afraid for you on the train!

Wednesday January 2, 2008 – 10:45pm (EST)

you continue to transport into your life with your words……fascinating! Such talent my friend!