If Only Time Were Part of the Public Transit System
Posted: 10 Mar 2023, 06:02
If Only Time Were Part of the Public Transit System
How I long to go back forty years
to start again with you.
I recall clutching you at 5th and Market St,
lunch hour in the Financial District,
strangers rubber necking
as I tried to kiss you, and you
turning away like a weather vane
in a torrential wind.
Still, the day was a good day
compared to the day you wanted a chance
to meet someone else.
You left me emptied,
a bucket with its bottom
knocked out.
I go through the motions as if that moment
is but one in a long bucket brigade
but I’m not fooling myself.
That day changed everything.
Thirty years later I’m aghast
at the chance lost.
Why is time
always drifting away,
like an empty life jacket
receding in a ship’s wake?
Why can’t time be part
of public transit,
where I could start again?
I imagine myself at a tram stop,
Time pulling up,
the door opening as it did 40 years ago,
the coin meter chattering happily away
as if there would always be change
and a future ahead
to look forward
to.
How I long to go back forty years
to start again with you.
I recall clutching you at 5th and Market St,
lunch hour in the Financial District,
strangers rubber necking
as I tried to kiss you, and you
turning away like a weather vane
in a torrential wind.
Still, the day was a good day
compared to the day you wanted a chance
to meet someone else.
You left me emptied,
a bucket with its bottom
knocked out.
I go through the motions as if that moment
is but one in a long bucket brigade
but I’m not fooling myself.
That day changed everything.
Thirty years later I’m aghast
at the chance lost.
Why is time
always drifting away,
like an empty life jacket
receding in a ship’s wake?
Why can’t time be part
of public transit,
where I could start again?
I imagine myself at a tram stop,
Time pulling up,
the door opening as it did 40 years ago,
the coin meter chattering happily away
as if there would always be change
and a future ahead
to look forward
to.