Dear Reader,
I’ve been riding the subway for as long as I can remember. Like most New Yorkers, I spend at least 8 hours a week underground, riding metal tubes through concrete tunnels, idly checking my phone or scribbling away in my notebook. Even after all these years, I still find the experience fascinating. There’s something sacramental about the whole thing, a brief glimpse of something larger than life itself. Whenever I ride the subway, I scramble to put the experience into poetry, the trains and the people riding them, a never-ending source of poetic inspiration.
The subway is a symbol of the city itself. Always moving, never stopping, running 24 hours a day and seven days a week. New York is often celebrated for its hustle and bustle and its wide-eyed, red-eyed approach to existence. But when you live in a city where everyone is always on the move, it seems wise to stop and ask, “are we going anywhere at all?”
This “Tanka” (I put tanka in quotes because I cheat the form a bit in this poem) was written while commuting to work on a cold Tuesday morning. Short and pithy, Manhattan Bound reflects on the nature of progress and how despite the presence of movement, one can still be idle, a passive agent moving through the world without any clear direction.
-Enjoy
MANHATTAN BOUND
Idle passengers
Carried along on iron wheels.
No destination,
just the humdrum of movement
and the illusion of purpose