With eclipse heart light
People look at each other again
Instead of merely talking
It's OK to live among the hive,
A speck of Shell stick
Or a giant, luminous, pulsating
Insect cloud with antennae
As the mermaid by the feather
Holds the pearl, the eternally voiding
Distorted mirror moon at night,
The only real evidence she exists
At least here, to elude sailors,
Meaning men, unable to see her,
For there is nothing to leverage
But what they do, nostalgic downs
Over her breath, her eyelash,
The curl of her smile.
I believe he is Russian,
Bald and impeccably polite --
He likes to cut in lines,
Block his neighboring seat,
Slip through the tiniest seam
To always be the first one on the train
Every day. It gives him joy
To play his solemn, cultural duty,
Choose an air-conditioned, upholstered seat,
A freedom so unlike other prisons,
I observe him every day, like a Mantis being
Ruling the frequency streams, and he,
Like any guy, clams up,
You know the type, can't speak
To release his mouthful
Stoic to the end
As the one service he can
Provide, but there are days
Like today, when a jogger
And an absent man
Lost in his mind
Were struck, killed by this very train
In this eclipse season, beings jumping
Away, things we have to say goodbye to
And for this test we're kept in this seat
To writhe in the stoppage until
We are grateful: for air and transport
And home and life, gratitude
Is the test of endurance, for indeed
That is what we have made it, without a word
Between us, to sit there all Marlon Brando cool,
He and I, who meet eyes for the first time
At the open door, the first words ever shared,
Something dumb and unyielding, voiceless
On what we together endured even, it wasn't a note
Like every woman would ring, carrying sadness
In all its loudness for the families, and even more
Those that don't have any, but we were able to see
How much deeper the sunset goes tonight,
Though no smiles and hugs ware shared beyond
The transactional distance we were so proud of
Dancing so respectfully behind, or beyond
Until the moment when everything is one again
Just to remind us, like a cutout on the portal,
All that we have forgotten
Is actually what is real.
