i.
reading Guy de Maupassant on the PATH
Hoboken platform 1993
just out of college
string of lights down one tunnel paling gone
my freshly-khaki’d butt in the hardwood slab
let’s call a bench my yellowed book open another
up the nearer tunnel clattering to
a string of lights mine this morning
ii.
20 minutes early
to Battery Park so I walk
uptown pretend
I’m still me the Hudson
an agitated storm tide gray as cheap ink
newsprint centuries in the gathering
longer than any breath
to my left under the under-
foot grate the subway I didn’t transfer to
approaching then receding
its own little tide
three stories down
people arranged together become a people
in their cars’ shared and inward internal lights become
tidy and patient a string of sound coiling
then releasing bunching then breaking
going their own way closed in on their own air
the same direction I am this morning