Today I rode the subway
For the time since the lockdown,
Pulled the bright blue Metrocard from my wallet
And swiped it gingerly through the metal reader.
Go, the machine told me, in green block letters
So I ran up the stairs just in time
To see a sign that read South Ferry 0 Minutes
And, just as I thought I’d missed my train,
The doors opened and I stepped inside.
And if it hadn’t been for the kid with the dark blue mask playing on his phone
And the yellow-suited sanitation worker
Who were there with me
In that subway car this morning,
I would have thought that it was just another dream about trying to go somewhere
But actually getting nowhere,
An endless trek through deserts and airports and ruined cities.
Yet somehow my hand remembered what my mind could not
And, with a flick of the wrist, I was home again
As if I had never been away,
As if the world had never changed,
As if there had never been a quarantine.
Rosalind Resnick
June 18, 2020
For the time since the lockdown,
Pulled the bright blue Metrocard from my wallet
And swiped it gingerly through the metal reader.
Go, the machine told me, in green block letters
So I ran up the stairs just in time
To see a sign that read South Ferry 0 Minutes
And, just as I thought I’d missed my train,
The doors opened and I stepped inside.
And if it hadn’t been for the kid with the dark blue mask playing on his phone
And the yellow-suited sanitation worker
Who were there with me
In that subway car this morning,
I would have thought that it was just another dream about trying to go somewhere
But actually getting nowhere,
An endless trek through deserts and airports and ruined cities.
Yet somehow my hand remembered what my mind could not
And, with a flick of the wrist, I was home again
As if I had never been away,
As if the world had never changed,
As if there had never been a quarantine.
Rosalind Resnick
June 18, 2020
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