Living in His Head
Feb 18 2008


His hair is thinning,
his beard unkempt.
He wears a brown wool sweater with corduroy pants.
He’s in old galoshes,
flopping open like hands in prayer.
He sits erect, but relaxed
as if in some old familiar easy chair,
lost in a hard-cover novel.

The rest of us scan the strip of garish ads
above the sealed windows.
Or stare distractedly at paperbacks.
Or straight ahead,
avoiding eye contact, sneaking peaks,
in the strained temporary intimacy
of this subway car, whizzing beneath the streets.
There’s the whoosh of air,
the hypnotic rumble,
and steel wheels
screeching through tight subterranean curves.

I close my eyes
between stops,
where a woman’s voice coos the station
and faceless bodies get on and off.
I like this ride,
coasting on auto-pilot
surrendering to the laws of time and distance
— permission to drift,
all my pressing lists
on hold.

And I marvel at this self-contained man,
who remains oblivious
to the crush of weary bodies,
and the tinny sound from leaking i-Pods,
and the sudden stuttering starts and stops
in this steel box
in a dark underground tunnel,
where the warm air smells
of ozone and cabbage rolls.
Perhaps he is climbing Mt. Everest,
or breaking stallions in the Wild West,
or making love
to some beauty who leaves him breathless.

He reads, unfazed;
barrelling through every stop and station
up and down the line
all day.