Aboard the train, the usual thing:
a conversation overheard,
then eavesdropped on: two friends
discussing an absent third,

their heads ashake with sympathy,
in shared concern their voices hushed;
so that I caught, for all my strain,
no more than snatches as we rushed

downtown. At first one word, “ … divorce … ,”
its steely second syllable
landing like a guillotine,
alone cut through the shrill

disharmony of track and wheel;
but then during a smoother stretch
whole phrases reached my ear:
it seems he’d chanced upon—poor wretch!—

“ … his wife in bed with someone else … ”
and that “ … his daughter has Tourette’s… . ”
And there I was, attending to
the woes of a man I’d never met,

whose very name I failed to learn;
yet all the while half-thinking of
my ...

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