A Different Subway Poem

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Subway Station

He stands in line
With the Friday night young and reckless,
Shifting foot-to-foot and foot-to-foot
Until the streetcar comes to swallow up the crowd
And he is left,
Too old and tough and gristly for a meal.
Moving slowly, shuffle-step,
He mingles with another crowd,
Another line,
Another eyeblink moment of forgotten.

Foot-to-foot and shuffle-step,
Down escalator, up,
He traces his one pattern,
Different partners every time.
When we grow so old we don't remember how to walk,
We dance.

Hunched over concrete floors he inches
Shuffle-step and shuffle-step,
Focused.
As if he must test every concrete tile to take his weight.
As if, should be be careless,
The very stones would cry,
"No loitering".


Subway Station by Erin Woods is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.