how, at the trolley stop, we all have a common mountain.
morning like a tall pine the day starts with, strong and silent;
how heavy scarves and hats and gloves sleep
on our bones. that the silver tracks pull around the last stop,
by a wash-and-fold where something is always moving,
soap and water hiding the colors of soaked clothes.
how standing here is so easily understood: the patience
or impatience, the idleness of hands. how it’s acceptable
just to know you’re in the place where something happens,
where the route ends and then again, begins. it’s possible
to ride with spare coins, barely treasure, the range of it
like peaks and valleys: to creek or city, to streets and homes.
how the waiting here is a good thing, how everyone rushes
just to be in this, this very, this very happening place.
Rachel Betesh is a nurse and a gardener who writes poems – at a wooden desk in a 112-year-old house, with the window open. Her poetry has been featured in The New Yorker, long-listed for the 2022 emerging poet prize at Palette Poetry, and is forthcoming in Brink magazine. She rides the #13 trolley through Philadelphia.