One might write or say,
Grand Central always rumbles. Today,
it was a defiant rumble that seemed
to last, my body shaking
as if an earthquake
were passing through me. A woman
in Japan, a week before,
perhaps my twin, was writing the poem
of her life. She had stumbled upon a great
flow of language, as if she were
a channel, meant to reach
droves, when she felt a rumbling
in her body shaking,
as if an earthquake
were passing through her.
She stood up slowly
from her chair, thinking suddenly
of her husband, their home
she wouldn’t see again,
the poem
she hadn’t finished.
Her poem fluttered to the floor,
dissolving with all but her last words—
the first names of her children.
Did I dream this? Was it a mirror?
A cop shouted, it’s only drilling—
The men and women at Grand Central
left anyway, throbbing, sobbing,
no longer telling ourselves,
we are different in New York.
Settled into my cozy train I wrote
this for her.
This article appears in September 2012.
