After returning from the larger world, and a journey of three thousand odd miles, he feels out of sorts, as an isotope would well beyond its half-life. Folks at home base ask him to tell them everything, yes everything he saw, did, experienced etc. And even though he had filled a small note book with pithy observations, short notes, rough haikus, jokes and conversations overheard, he feels handicapped in a way he can’t explain to himself, why he can’t undertake such a Proustian task right away.

He is also reminded of Italo Calvino’s ‘Invisible Cities’, in which Marco Polo spins narratives of cities he supposedly visited or passed through to the Great Kubla. While he senses that any narrative he might construct out of his note pile would be that of his own invisible cities, and not any real city, which as he saw it doesn’t exist anymore anyway! But he must begin somewhere, if only to unburden somewhat the sense of dullness, and to retreat from the cave, into which his mind seemed to have sunk after his return.

So he begins with the thought that was running through his head as he stood under a jet of hot water, in an attempt to cure a headache, and the thought is that of subways. He finds these rat holes and tunnels hidden under the city he had visited to be in a dreadful fashion, terribly riveting. He thinks Minotaur would be at home in that crossed maze, as would it be a great setting for more of Jack The Ripper kind of stories. And then writes a poem set in the subways.

Carlita, traveling in these tunnels Beneath the behemoth city I think Of the simplicity of those summers

Where in the magnolia shade you Constantly hummed these tunes heard First, by your granite faced ancestor in

Those hills filled with rhododendron Hells. Carlita, how did I come upon You, under which overturned rock

Did I find you, Carlita, Carlita? The birds here are all strange even If they are called by familiar names,

And I am a costumed stranger playing Fiddle tunes for bits they fling into my Upturned hat. The heart, what can I say

Of the heart, Carlita? That it is an empty Hat which always stays bare, bereft of any Emotion, going through deadened motions?

Carlita, your name is the only tune my bow Draws from strings, your name is the groan Of steel wheels on steel rails. Carlita, you Are the ache whose rumble keeps me awake, A ghost living in this endless subway dark.

Thoughts of New York City, interlaced with thoughts of Appalachian hikes and fiddle tunes.