Local and Express

I've been riding buses and trains
since I was knee high to my mother on many an errands with her
once under the elevated line through the Bowery
where on every street congregated alcoholics, stumbling dizzily
in the sorry state of zombie, bolts of sunlight flashing their movements
from the trusses overhead.

How many poets were among them,
their grievances moon shine distilled and bottled?
On Third Avenue when I was 10, on the way to be fitted
for a first Communion suit.

Later, much later I'd cross the Pampas,
west to east, south to north, hauled by restlessness
and smokey locomotives up the backbone of the Andes
to the lunar landscape of Potosi.

The planet seems to me to be a massive railroad terminal,
billions of people milling about, eyes some blue, eyes some night
eyes of shattered mirrors,
eyes of criminals and their victims

Am I still a hobo passenger,
or have I been promoted to porter?