City Muse #1:  New York

Frannie Z

 

One of the best things

was bumping into friends

or relatives.

Almost careened into my parents

near 34^th Street.

Unshut a train door

for my best friend

on a platform.

 

In those days New York

–four of the boroughs-

was like a vast interlinking honeycomb,

studded, netted, limned through

with people who were mine,

and their friends.

 

I loved taking trains

to see how they connected.

Subway maps

spread out like tea leaves

in cups, unknown fortunes,

spider webs, but better.

My friends and I

recited lines and their stops

by heart, our subway rosary.

Each weekend

we’d inhabit another train

from start to endpoint,

never minding how gauche we appeared

or how un-neighborhooded,

 

Perhaps, like some redlined buildings,

we looked too vacant

to attack.