A rare donation

Like many New Yorkers, when I’m on the subway and someone enters the car making an announcement asking for money, I tune them out. It’s a defense mechanism I (we?) adopted after being assailed by certain people’s offensive comments, demeanors and/or odors. But today a thin old man who looked vaguely like a cross between Jack Keroac and a refugee from a war camp in Rawanda entered the number 1 train I was riding and announced it was time for a poetry reading. This struck me because I was just reading about a man’s misunderstanding of what a poetry reading is in Russo’s novel, Nobody’s Fool. So I looked up to view the poet, proclaiming his pieces to be original and “never before heard.” There was something about him that made me want to tune in for a change. But by this time he was at the other end of the car, facing away from me, so I couldn’t hear what he said until he turned back to utter his departing line, “And don’t forget to smile, New York,” he said wearily, “it won’t mess up your hair.” And I did smile, wryly, sharing his obvious exhaustion with those people on the subway, on the island, on the planet that are so consumed with outward appearances and material possessions that they forget to see beauty in life, love, art, and find joy in their fellow human beings. He then disappeared into the next car, using the doors we’re not supposed to use because of their unsafety. I waited for the subway to stop and used the proper doors to exit the car and walked the two feet to enter the next car’s doors. I found the poet and handed him the only dollar I had on me. It was my stop so I turned around to leave the train again, only to have the doors close, trapping my foot and hands that attempted to keep them open. “I gotcha,” the poet assured me, inserting his hand between the doors too. “It will open again,” he offered and we both took our limbs out to let the doors close.
“It’s o.k. if it doesn’t.” I said, thinking I might like to hear more of his words. But it did, and I jumped out again, watching the train and the poet pull away from my day and hoping that he saw my sad smile through his sunglasses.