We have been waiting for quite some time
on this subway platform underground.

The men with the suits.
The women with their bags.
The homeless and drunk.

We the masses.

We’ve been waiting together
for the local train.

We shift and sigh.
We roll our eyes
as the fifth express train screams past us

and the tunnel for the local is still empty
and waiting like a mouth to be kissed

I look around at these people
I don’t know
and how in this moment we are all together.

Me and the lady with her romance book.

Me and the baby asleep in the stroller.

Me and the man who keeps one hand hooked on the pole
even as he leans over the rails to see
if the train is coming.

He’s afraid of being pushed. A lot of people
have been pushed lately.

After the sixth express train passes,
I realize

that in all those places they told me it would be
at the election booth
in the chapel
at the bedside of a sick and dying loved one
crouched on sore knees hands clasped in prayer

they were wrong.

Hope,
true real hope lives here
in this underground tunnel
brought together by us little people
in our little lives

who just want to go
home.