10 minutes later
and Penn Station is, altogether, a different place.
Swishing efficient commuters who swam in silvery schools
Now plod
And list
And stare
in white windbreakers and baseball caps.
Slender briefcases become engorged, drag and flop behind
The bewildered owners of this new world.
You must be on the ball to pass through
This wreck of a dance hall, unharmed.
Later, safe in your seat,
the Meadowlands sway and reek,
look up to that cross-hatched sky.
Below, tiny shipwrecks and cormorants,
a lone, litter-white egret in her power line lagoon
stretches her neck to consider a tire.
Is this where we have been trying—killing ourselves—to go?
Trauma For Dummies 