Elisabeth Murawski

Passengers on the Green Line Train

In the shadows of U Street station,
two young men, NBA-tall,

are eagerly conversing.
They could be old friends

catching up on the game.
Or new ones in virgin

territory, tapping white
flexible canes,

the sine qua non
of the legally blind.

The train arrives with few
empty seats. They choose

to stand, the one regal
as a Masai warrior

coaching the shorter
bearded redhead

what strap to grab onto.
They sway like this,

solemn, intense,
not speaking for two

more stops,
then exit laughing

to the platform
where they embrace,

a tangle of arms
and hearts exposed,

two windswept cypresses
wrestling with the dark.

Grounded

It’s like waiting for news
in an emergency room and the nurses
won’t tell you anything. Terminal
C is empty, like a scene from
On the Beach. Our footsteps
clatter and click, the shops
shuttered and locked. Outside,
a man with a cell phone
connects the dots to New York,
the attack. Later I read reports
of black smoke, but I swear
when I looked up, the sky was orange
above the Pentagon. I board the last
Metro to Huntington. There are
soldiers on the train, quiet
and tense as switch-blades.
Only their boots seem real.
I don’t think to pray. Luggage
left behind, all I have is my purse,
a book intended for the plane,
the life of Hart Crane. I know
how it ends, but not what this
day will bring. I share a cab
with strangers. I turn the key
and step inside. Here, nothing’s
changed. African violets
in a green plastic pot. The
gilded iron figure of a woman
with a headdress like a nun.
Hart Crane’s first book of poems
was called White Buildings.
There is this to love from “Voyages”:
The seal’s wide spindrift gaze toward paradise.

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Elisabeth Murawski: “Born and raised in Chicago, I’ve lived in the DC area for decades. I’ve always been a ‘culture vulture’ as friends have teased. Retired from my federal job as a training specialist, I’ve relished the time to write. ‘Passengers on the Green Line Train’ is one of my ‘subway’ poems, written from observations while riding on the DC Metro. ‘Grounded’ is about a thwarted trip on September 11, on my way to a training session in Lousiville; Metro is also involved.”