San Francisco, On the F-Train
He was a poet and when he saw something really interesting he made notes in a little black notebook. He noticed a young girl in careless hipster clothing scrunched up on the front bench of the antique Milano streetcar. She had a distant look in her eyes, he thought, a blank helpless Rhesus Monkey kind of look. The world around her, the poet imagined, had become a cage that blocked her every move, so that she lived in ever-smaller circles of distress and boredom. He envisioned her numb at work, distracted on the street, bored in the grocery and, of course, her lonely nights. When she stood up to get off the train she smiled at him, a friendly unselfconscious smile, then glanced down at the platform carefully. The door opened, she stepped off, and was gone. The train pulled away, its bell ringing, and he took out his notebook as he watched her crossing over Market Street.
darkened ships really
passing on the sea unseen
he thinks to espy
she barely notices out
the corner of her eye
this kind of romance
imagines assignations
on the sly, cheaply
arranged. The fantasy guy
the dreamer up on the roof
she gets off the train
and walks the block to her flat
where she’s living with
a dog and a cockatoo
who stutters and only speaks Greek
Charles D Tarlton is a retired university professor living and writing in Northampton, Massachusetts with his wife Ann Knickerbocker, an abstract painter.