I sat next to a muttering man today
who swore when the train announced delays. 

The middle finger of his right hand tapped
an erratic beat on his khaki-clad thigh.
Then a buzz sounded from his left pocket;
he fumbled his phone open on the second try. 

The finger tapped on, now in double time,
his voice steady as he answered, “This is he.”
A pause; the finger froze. His voice roughened
and softened as he lowly rasped, “I see.”

His face turned toward the window pane,
but the blurred landscape escaped his look.
“I’m sorry, the damn train was too late,”
he whispered as his shoulders shook.

I sat next to a grown man crying today,
and I didn’t know what to say.

**

Revision of “On the Train to New Carlton” (4-08-13)

I got out of the shower into the late afternoon. Since then, I’ve lounged at my desk in front of my laptop with my acoustic guitar resting atop my pants-clad thigh and against my orange-bra-clad chest. My hair dried, and the wet strands chilling my shoulder blades became a light wave that tickles my back when I shift. The din outside my window from the quad seven stories below slowly settled, the music disappearing after two hours and the noise of cheerful shouts sinking with the sun. As the room darkened, the glow of my laptop seemed to grow brighter, and I could have been anywhere. For hours I’ve been locked up, half-clothed perusing guitar tabs and Philip Larkin’s poetry, annotating on PoetryGenius. And it’s the happiest I’ve been in weeks.