This subway train rests like a contented cow

savoring the evening’s cud. Ruminates, placid

at the station, all its doors yawning.

My wife and I are stalled inside its innards,

waiting for the balky thing to budge.

 

A man stalks up and down the platform,

yards from us, on an unconnected plane.

Furious shorebird on an inflamed beach.

His voice: what is it? Electric sander.

Talk-radio shouter with bad reception.

 

The train lolls, dull and open-mouthed.

The man hotfoots across his burning sands

till he arrests himself outside our car,

eyes in our direction through the window.

We don’t dare look at him, can’t look away.

 

I could claim that his glare shivers the barrier.

But he ensures that with two full-arm,

rock against plexiglass smashes, aimed at us.

Spider cracks spring from an oval wound.

This feels too strange to have truly happened.

 

I wonder, vaguely, why he doesn’t board this stupid,

sleepy beast. Maybe its guts repel his nightmare

as our train wakes at last from sleepy-time,

ambles to its next familiar meadow.