In the NY subway

Surely the sound of rushing
water did not spring forth from the sluggish wet
garbage-laden trickle of moisture that wends its
inexplicable way
from nowhere to somewhere down the center
of the tracks.
There’s a warm pipe, running straight
up the pole next to the one I lean my sweaty hair against,
that is the source of the properly musical,
hidden-waterfall tinkle. A carefully tuned decorative fountain
or a merry stream of urine in a lonesome bowl
makes that sound.
A constant lilting rush suggests the runoff from furious rain,
despite the skies’ relentless cloudlessness
when I descended into this too-hot land of concrete and steel.
One brave rat
noses its way through the soggy newspaper in the pit of the tracks,
darts under the third rail
when the station begins to rumble with the approaching train.
I looked for him again in vain, that native
of this unnatural country,
persistent even in this sooty, sweaty, greasy,
in-between land of sparks and
muted voices
that echo on down the line.
A cave of going
somewhere else.
The Wood Between the Worlds
with riveted trees,
cement clouds,
and smudged and oily tile shrubbery.

-Alissa