As indifferent as a thresher, the escalator harvests

unripe dramas from the underground --

seeds of fear, contempt and love, religion, scooped

and scattered rattlingly at the top, never to be

planted -- by-products of linear proximity, of

exhaustion -- like the down-conveyor, always

broken. Unhusked, I enter air and begin again

forgetting steadily several lives imagined

in ascent:

                the hip-pat seeking wallet when rush

brushed by with plastic bags and flash

of Hanes --

                        the old professor tugging up

beltless jeans and waiting to see his friends who ask

What does the Bible really say? --

                                                          and cafe

au lait Achilles tendon, bare, funneling

down to Adidas golden laurels, eye --

level, until:

the step peaks and goes flush

as if to push us through the doors

and the wind that pushes back, wet

light and traffic of being alive.

A dozen daily Orpheuses open petal-

like to compass points, to solitary

lodestone lives, never looking back but

down, to concrete, loafers, and impossible

carpets wondering what heavy tolls

they paid in transit from the dream.