New York City subway riders are often on a hurried, harried singular mission to get from Point A to Point B as quickly as possible.
During the ride, we cocoon in motion amidst a pressing throng of humanity who are variously occupied with eye avoidance, sleeping, reading, texting, manspreading, panhandling, decibel-deafening earbud listening, and sighing. It takes a lot to distract, halt, and especially to wow us.
Just as the Shuttle train eases into Grand Central, a framed poem on the subway train wall catches my eye:
Leave It All Up to Me (Major Jackson, b. 1968)
“All we want is to succumb to a single kiss
that will contain us like a marathon
with no finish line, and if so, that we land
like newspapers before sunrise, halcyon
mornings like blue martinis. I am learning
the steps to a foreign song: her mind
was torpedo, and her body was storm,
a kind of Wow. All we want is a metropolis
of Sundays, an empire of hand-holding
and park benches. She says, “Leave it all up to me.”
Train doors open, and bodies spill out, but I halt and read it again. Wow indeed!
May you be happily wowed when and where you least expect it during National Poetry Month.
Read more about New York City’s Poetry in Motion project and revisit Curious Cats Read post of “A Poem in Your Pocket” here as well.
“Poetry is a life-cherishing force. For poems are not words, after all, but fires for the cold, ropes let down to the lost, something as necessary as bread in the pockets of the hungry.” – Mary Oliver