Wheels

The doors labor open to the heaped
                   clamor of commute—conductor’s
          drawl & static, the PA leaking
​
crackled locales &, below that, more urgently,

         a metallic rasp & chafe—kneeling there,
                   a man on a make-shift contraption
         (ply-wood base, shopping cart wheels) pulls off
the painstaking work of carting himself

across the gapped threshold. Swaddled
                   in a blanket—someone’s beat-up
         woolen blue—he wheels his bulk

on fisted knuckles to the pole’s brief

         mooring. That’s when the blanket
                    falls & what’s left of his legs
         pokes through like stout elbows.
By then there’s no need

for pageantry, but when he reaches
                   the car’s middle (there’s no one,
         now, who isn’t watching) he begins,

gently as his weather-worn voice will allow,

         to sing. Nothing intricate or too
                   creative, this unadorned loop
         of a song’s just enough to contain
the four recurring lyrics—I got

no legs. He lifts his eyebrows
                   like a choirboy, distinctly
         proud, before repeating

the simple fact of it—I got no

         legs. And as he sings, he rows himself
                   forward like the song’s scant exhalation,
         & not his blackened fingers,
propelled him. Imagine the intricate

travelogue of those wheels—
                   stippled asphalt, cobble, curb
         & impossible staircase—the endless

caterwaul of friction a sort of kindred

         music to him. Slick linoleum rumble
                   as he threads through the aisle,
         clutches the handle, hazards
the gap to the car in front.

We don’t even need to watch
                   to see how the blanket drops,
         the exertion of retrieval, the routine

culminating in four unreeled syllables

         that let you forget any touch
                   of affectation. Because, showbiz
         aside, he’s answered fate not
with complaint or lamentation,

but with song (& let’s not pretend—oh yes,
                   it’s coming: there’s something out there
         with our names on it): & we all

need a song that says mercy. Song

that says O veiled & fathomless
                   city, strangely bejeweled by such
         sundered & dazzling creatures,
hear our simple pleas because

there’s a legless man in the next
                   car & I can’t stop feeling
         how our bodies speed

through the space his just held,

         how he’s the part of us
                   that’s gotten there first.