25/30

Nobody here is happy for you

The project of joy fails at 10:15

at the Bronxville station. Working men

and women stagger off the 9:45, weaving

like the line graph of the market, no telling

if they are the objects or agents

of change. Something smug about it,

to unbutton ten thousand collars

at a rung bell. Their woes must rest

or migrate. And on the 10:20, children

just heading out to drink. Scorn would be

so easy, but past it--what? Separate lives,

theirs and yours, two line segments one

a little longer than the other, a hundred times again, 

like a hundred silver crosses hung 

between throat and bosom.

No one enjoys the time

that surrounds the intended moment.

No one cares what you heard the poet say.

She wasn't really talking

to you in particular. You read all the signs

on the platform very hard, again and again,

until all the counters in the Os look like glasses

someone else has emptied. You wait for your stop

and re-read: NO, LOCAL, 

SMOKING, HOME.

NOTE: A counter is the empty enclosed space in a letter of type.