A Poem

Ping, ping
like radar we move without touching.

I don't have to look to see you there
middle-aged white woman with a Danielle Steele book
African american young male reading what seems to be
a copy of a local college's syllabus
an older man of indeterminate age reading a
tattered copy of "El Diario" and a Carribean woman
chatting with another over pictures of the latest
hurricane's devastation while an elderly man
hovers over a copy of "The National Creed,"
we all read or seem to be
engrossed in some kind of activity or another, rather
than watching each other without really looking.

The Asian-american woman with an irridescent blue
compact powdering her nose and reapplying her lip gloss
as her male friend beside her strokes her knee and
speaks in muffled tones to himself perhaps, or not,
since he has a black wire stretched taut between one ear
and disappears into his pocket, perhaps to a cell,
it's so difficult nowadays to distinguish between those
of us who are really crazy and those who are simply
attached to the latest communication device.

Into the tunnel we go
deeper into the darkness where
even cell phones cease to chime.

Like bats we are aware of
every thing we cannot see.

We, who are native to this passage, stand out
from those wo are just passing through
it's all in the absence of color
black suits, dress coats, suede parkas
black sweaters, jeans, briefcases, black tees,
athletic shoes, dress shoes,fuck-me heels,
black flats, pagers, gloves, hats,
computer cases, sliver phones in black cases, caps
with Yankee logos,Mets,Knicks, Liberty, black
wrinkled plastic bags that hold all the belongings
of a few that live here and there and in the darkness
black is the standout feature that separates
Bronx, Manhattan, and Brooklyn from the
rest of the the known universe.

We wind our way through the tunnels past the
blue lights that designate where a phone lies
below, a connection in case of an emergency
between the needed and the keepers of the MTA
so they can shut down the third rail power but
only for 30 seconds before the caller must indentify
his or her official NYPD or transit standing,
although perhaps things have changed now
that terrorists from abroad are creeping around the
edges of our lives, terrorists that have the potential
to put our own home-grown kind back into the shadows
of an afterthought,
these are dangerous times.

Over the bridge
through the tunnel to
the lighted station we go
where the train disembowels and

ping, ping
like lemmings we
resume our destiny.