BOMB SCARE AT SOUTH STATION
By Lillian Baker Kennedy
Each eighth of a mile
is another thirty cents.
It seems a few turns of the wheel
exact a higher and higher price.
I jump out a half block away.
On the glassed-in stairwell, people snake,
luggage led like children up and down.
Cell phone to mouth, a man in a raincoat looks up.
He’s watching South Station’s façade
as if it might astonish us all.
And the line of yellow tape
bars the cross
to rides delayed
by a threat to bomb
the nearness of home.
I get in line
to avoid being left
in a wasteland of concrete and glass.
I calculate exits, predict to myself
some stranger’s kindness
will help me live
through the shards of any
blast.
As we climb, en masse,
the powerless escalator,
I tell a fellow passenger
my son will think me “reckless”
to go in while others go out.
But my
feet need terra firma.
We are
naming our places to each other,
“Littleton, New Hampshire,”
and a
summer hill sold
to a logging company
long ago.
We share what we left with regret,
our shoulders slung with baggage,
lugging, trudging the risers,
another set of halted steps.
The cells keep ringing.
The passengers, too, are calling.
I get in line for “Portland,”
and I hold my breath off and on
until we cross the bridge at Portsmouth.
Beneath the windshield’s metronome,
in our darkly hushed conveyance,
runs a stream of murmuring voices,
the cautions and the promises
we make to those who love us:
One more exit. Home- ten minutes.
I love you. It’s snowing. Slow going.
I’ll see you soon,
soon
