Poems on the Underground

Rush hour and my fear for how I would

Negotiate the other passengers

Without too many ‘please’,

‘Thank you’ and ‘excuse me’s slips from my mind

As I pour with them into the

Carriage, step across the gap

Between the train and the platform, the gap

Constricting in a press of bodies that would

Never normally indulge in such proximity with the

Strangers that are the other passengers.

And thoughts begin to press into my mind

Of poetry and other things, how they please,

Hope that the gods of Underground will hear my silent pleas

To clear a seat or two and make a gap

There, though if it were less busy I wouldn’t mind

Standing, would

Even smile at the other passengers.

Shrill beep as the

Doors open, the

Train disgorging scores of ‘excuse me please’

As passengers

Cross and recross the gap

As if they would

Make of the mass one mind.

Sighing, I make up my mind,

Waiting for when, the

Doors clamp tight shut, like an oyster, (Would

Someone please

Make a gap

Among the passengers)

Take out the book before the faceless passengers

And fill my mind

To bridge the gap

And space between the

Ones that live as they please

And those that would.

They buzz like passengers, the

words that please the mind,

navigate the gap of have-been and would.