Hello
Here is an old poem by my bearded friend Paul Holland which I re-read recently. Hope you enjoy it (again!).
Riding the Madrid Metro
1.
I didn’t see the band get on.
The mom and dad
Both wearing Disney shirts and their kids tied to games machines,
The old woman I stood for, after trying to read the metro poetry,
Yes; I saw them.
But I didn’t see the band get on
I heard and stood across from the giggling girls talking in Portugese
I saw them..
But then the band put to play.
2.
The band of Indians
Peruvian?-They’d skipped the ponchos…
I hadn’t been prepared for the band getting on.
Hadn’t seen them put to play.
I had been thinking of you of course
Of our newly found love.
Of how to change this
Make that work what I should do
The details and such.
They put to sing in that dark hole of the heights.
3.
And the band got on and I knew of the depths
That she and I had fallen
Of the coffin nails driven deep into what was a marriage
Of my broken nails in my attempts to free us both.
Of her despair.
And they sang in that hole of the heights
Of joy and hardship
They knew of the yearning of the exiled
Of the long distance of a view.
4.
And I thought of you my new love.
And I remembered
That the winds will blow And thought I don’t mind
For it is of you, not the details or such, that they sang.
As now I’ll be ready for the winds to rage
And for the screaming distance of a view.
I saw that the Portugese girls were laughing.
As before me they’d noticed I’d put to cry
Sweet salt water tears.
I could no longer hide when the band got on.