Subway

The station platform, clean and broad, his stage for push-ups, sit-ups, hamstring stretch, as he laid aside his back pack, from which his necessaries bulged, as he bulged through jeans torn at butt, knee and thigh, in deep palaver with himself—sigh, chatter, groan.  Deranged but common. We sat at a careful distance to spy on his performance, beside a woman in her thirties, dressed as in her teens— this is L.A.—singing to herself. How composed, complete and sane she seemed.  A book by the Dalai Lama in her hands, her face where pain and wrong were etched, here becalmed, with faint chirps leaking from the headphones of her walkman. Not talking.  Singing, lost in song.