This train has a lavatory like an airplane
and uniformed women in red tunics serve
snacks and beer. I close my eyes
and think of those boyhood subway rides
through the Bronx. My father jumped the turnstile
and told me to crawl underneath
so we could save the 50-cent fare.
I couldn’t wait to be tall like my father and hurl
myself over the turnstile, a sort of working-class
Olympic event. The turnstiles are different
today, more like revolving doors
with fortified steel gates. My father and his New York
are long gone, lost to America’s restless rusting.
My father never left the U.S., even when he served
in the Army. With my eyes still closed I see
him sitting beside me now: on a high-speed train
pumping through the veins of our Italian
homeland with my wife, who sips a Prosecco
and me a Peroni while I read Richard Blanco,
and I hear my father’s voice asking not how we paid
our fare but, rather, if.

– David Colodney