Subway Reads: Poetry

Many of you are probably MUG subscribers. Those of you who haven't yet signed up, you'll want to subscribe for your daily dose of joesnyc and all around good New York info. MUG posted today, in honor of 9/11, an amazing poem by one of my favorite poets. It made my day a little better, gave a little space of silence to my busy morning. I hope you appreciate it too.

Riding the Elevator Into the Sky

by Anne Sexton (1975)

As the fireman said:
Don't book a room over the fifth floor
in any hotel in New York.
They have ladders that will reach further
but no one will climb them.
As the New York Times said:
The elevator always seeks out
the floor of the fire
and automatically opens
and won't shut.
These are the warnings
that you must forget
if you're climbing out of yourself.
If you're going to smash into the sky.
Many times I've gone past
the fifth floor,
cranking upward,
but only once
have I gone all the way up.
Sixtieth floor:
small plants and swans bending
into their grave.
Floor two hundred:
mountains with the patience of a cat,
silence wearing its sneakers.
Floor five hundred:
messages and letters centuries old,
birds to drink,
a kitchen of clouds.
Floor six thousand:
the stars,
skeletons on fire,
their arms singing.
And a key,
a very large key,
that opens something--
some useful door--
somewhere--
up there.