Mid-Town Brown Line, Rush Hour

This is the second exercise in the W.S. Graham challenge at PFFA. The first line of the poem is from one of Graham's poems. I only had an hour to write it.

Meanwhile surely there must be something to say,
but nothing forms or travels out of our bodies.
He stands so close his flannel shirt
rubs its cheek against me.

The train must be
coming
from somewhere, the north maybe.
He’s reading the New Yorker. The floor,
covered in dark homogenous city,
scuffles its feet.

I find myself
waiting
for the distant rumble:
steel and bones shifting
side to side.
Another minute
and we’ll hear it, all of us, evaporating
into our music and magazines.
Pressed hard,
almost knocked off balance
by the air splitting outward from the train.