Night

Knowing

And you, night: I recognize you now. Every day, from Court Street to beyond 125th Street on the ACE and often back, after walking atop the bee hive vibration of a hollowed out spine of earth and iron, I see you. In that soot-patinæd steel projectile we sway and lurch in perfect unison, eyes never once meeting, for years?, but our shared space and witness to humanity at its pinnacle of mundane, to labor, to rest, to labor again.
Maybe you were sad

one day.

I couldn't have known.

For all that we share

in the vacuous space

under the dirt and concrete

and asphalt and mortals

whirls in tunnels and passages,

wet and dank and unseen,

silent but for the ephemeral gnashing

of steel on steel,

hastening ever.



Maybe you don't want to know,

and perhaps

I don't either,

the depth

and meaning

of events and news and wonder and droll.

Maybe I do.

And maybe that's why

I feel...okay

hurtling, as we do,

seeing you there

every day, from 125th Street

and beyond Court Street on the ACE,

and hopefully back.