John Wieners: My Mother

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Elevated railroad structure and blighted area below Washington Street, looking south from the corner of Bartlett, Boston, Massachusetts: photo by Ernst Halberstadt (1910-1987) for U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, February 1973 (National Archives and Records Administration)

talking to strange men on the subway,

doesn't see me when she gets on,

...........at Washington Street
but I hide in a booth at the side

.....and watch her worried, strained face --
..the few years she has got left.
.....Until at South Station

....I lean over and say:
..I've been watching you since you got on.
.......She says in an artificial
..........voice: Oh, for Heaven's sake!

....as if heaven cared.

But I love her in the underground
......and her gray coat and hair
sitting there, one man over from me
......talking together between the wire grates of a cage.

 
John Wieners (1934-2002): My Mother, from The Ages of Youth in Ace of Pentacles (1964)