Midsummer on the F train to Brooklyn and a heat wave
at its peak, the crowded car charged with so much
human energy and teeming proximity it begs a festival
Friday night in the underground: each pole we hold
a Maypole to the dance with every lurching turn,
the boozy air festooned with chatter and laughter
and all the gleaming beads of perspiration taking shape.
Outnumbered in the swirl and swelter are these two
newly minted missionaries, one an ex-wrestler bursting
his shirtsleeves, the stick-thin other wracked with acne,
nameplates engraved to designate them elders though
barely yet men. They speak with their hands and preach
to no one at the moment, Elder Brown and Elder Elg
happy to take five between one borough and the next,
the only conversion at work here their many gestures
into language. Where are they going and to whom
will they appear in uniform on such a humid night?
In the balancing act that rollicks and teeters toward
the tipping point, is this bacchanal kept on the rails
by their earnest goodwill and brave animated silence?
Might we otherwise self-combust, every sweaty
face a blazing effigy in the bonfire climax to a life
that burns and burns? Each sinner a latter-day
saint in waiting. We are picking up speed
beneath the river, soon the usual stations of a cross
made daily: York, Jay St., Bergen, Carroll, Smith–Ninth. . .
I won’t follow this pair past my stop to see where
they’re headed, that would be weird. But what if I
told you I did so years ago on an autumn night,
when a blind Hasidic man got on board with a German
Shepherd and took his seat directly across from me?
The dog on its haunches at his feet, as if posing for
a portrait beyond ironic. I couldn’t help myself and
stayed on all the way to Ditmas where they got off.
We emerged in the bedtime quiet of Borough Park.
Display windows empty in bakeries and Judaica shops.
Men in tallit vests smoking outside a hardware store
probably took me for another jerk priced out of Dumbo
when I made the same turn down a residential street
and had to stop not because it was the right thing to do,
rather the only thing when arrested by the sight
before me: some homes aglow and others gone dark,
women in scarves shucking corn under a porch light
as dry leaves skittered down the sidewalk where a man
and his shepherd soon vanished past a streetlamp.
I stood there a moment and looked over my shoulder
as if I, too, had been followed. Then turned around
to go home, that is, to the world that burns and burns.