Yellow Pole Theater on the MAX – Poetry by Bob Sterry
Episode 1 –
I smiled at them
And their small child in his stroller
Only the man smiled back
Climbing aboard the southbound MAX
Clinging to the yellow poles
Framed by the yellow poles
In a transit theater.
She did not smile
Wearing the basic scarf of her faith
A blue hijab
She would not smile
And my smile
Meant to acknowledge
Our short common journey,
And something warmer
Appears a threat.
She could not smile
At a stranger.
Only a fixed grimace
Anxiety or fear
Lay on her face
Eyes flicking left and right
And to her child
Obliviously squirming.
Our cultures lay between us
Surely not an impervious barrier
Episode 2 –
I did not smile at them
Climbing aboard the southbound MAX
Clinging to the yellow poles
Framed by the yellow poles
In a transit theater.
They did not smile at me.
Scruffy, disheveled
Hauling a loaded four-wheel trailer
Presumably their lives
And for ten minutes
I guessed the content of those lives
The sad decline
The erosion of resources
The flight of friends
The flight of hope
But when she
Bulky, purple hair, pushed in face
Pulled out an IPad
And then he
A scarecrow in near rags
Pulled out an IPhone
I had to guess again.
Modern poverty
No less humiliating.
Our economies lay between us
Surely not an impervious barrier.
The Yellow Pole Theater
Never fails to play
Never fails to jolt me out of
My assumptions and my complacency.