Hope’s Timbre

City’s almost quiet hour
awaits lone wanderer’s entrance,
thespian remorse moving
down concrete steps from stage door exit,
through heavy fog escort,
across gum blotched pavement
where cigarette butts
and fast food wrappers hitch rides
atop the fetid mist rising from manhole covers
of the Great White Way.

Always at the ready,
Broadway signs of joy
glittering false hope,
vying for center stage,
Time Square’s perpetual opening night
like no other.

Above muted train rail echoes,
bodiless street crossings beckon,
framed overhead by millions of watts,
a metropolis of man-made stars,
sparking delusional bribery,
even for a vacuous 2:00 AM.

At subway’s entrance,
melancholy wafts upward
from underground platforms,
Miles-like blues whispering trampled hope
drift across collapsed sleepers,
crashed believers,
staggering deceivers,
embracing Escher’s upside down landscape,
surreal longing for the rapture,
freedom,
disappearance of pain.

Down the stairs of dank air,
white tiled walls defiled with spray can and marker
house the tunnel winds that forever reek of decay,
rats, roaches, many things once alive,
now but centuries-old-remnants of what was,
what still is late night’s weigh station of despair.

At platform’s edge,
trumpeter leans against pillar
his instrument crying a guttural wail,
lamenting many who’ve passed,
for all who might pass.

From the Bard’s world above,
lone wanderer makes staircase entrance
from the ubiquitous world stage of expression,
where all of humanity,
merely actors.

Local Train enters station,
stops and opens doors.
Wanderer pauses before trumpeter…
gently places five dollars in his cup,
steps into subway car.
Movement again as the train’s electrical hum
blends with the horn’s lonely yowl of gratitude.

Train disappears into tunnel’s darkness.

Sudden silence.

Loneliness catches its breath.

Hope’s timbre continues.