Psychiatrists on the Subway

by: Ron Charach
 

One rarely spots psychiatrists on the subway
rubbing the haze of a long day's sessions
from their lean temples,
or thumbing through paperbacks that deal
with anything-but.
Wouldn't they like an update on who's
in the world and how they're doing?
Or would the ridership be wary of men and women
whose briefcases rattle with the tic tac
of pills, whose ears perk
like armadillos' at conversations
two seats over?
More likely we locate them in a bad joke,
in a wing-chair beside a firm couch,
a suicide statistic, a product seminar
with deli sandwiches courtesy of Pfizer or Roche
or Eli Lilly;
perhaps on the beach of a convention hotel
with a panorama of beach-blanket beauties
who seldom talk revealingly.

Before bed a psychiatrist sets his ears
on the night-table
and prays for a night of long silence
from a god who prefers
to listen.

(C) 1997  Ron Charach, first published in Past Wildflowers

Ron Charach is a practicing psychiatrist whose eighth book of poetry, Selected Portraits, will be published in the fall of 2007. His website is www.library.utoronto.ca/canpoetry/charach.

East side, west side

by: Joe Flanagan

Pummeling under bursting broadways,
Tunneling thunder, subway causeways.
  
Cameos glinting in glass and steel,
Gotham etchings, plainly surreal.
  
Manikins'mime, contorted, intimate,
Test of time, a New York minute.
  
Rollicking silent, station to station,
Coiled, classless, sequestration.