god On The Morning Local

I saw him on the local train during rush hour,
a newspaper cone of peanuts in his hand,
smiling at me through a web of weary limbs
and disenchanted heads,
a lesser god with a stubble and sad eyes.

Is this chance, I asked him, or fate,
or is there no difference?
he shrugged like a basement programmer
who had written a game with a million possibilities,
one thing leads to another, he said,
didn’t you want to see me?
how can I win or at least not lose,
I was begging,
five peanuts later he asked,
who decides if it is victory
or defeat?

Through the window I saw life
like a flip book,
one snapshot after the other,
each alive for a cry and a
half turn of the wheel,
each moment, each frame,
dying and born as the next,
meaning nothing by itself,
leading nowhere by itself,
he was watching me, still eating,
this is my stop, he said softly,
your station’s next.

I followed him to the exit,
we left a bird behind,
then a cloud,
then the sun,
then him,
I shrugged,
me and a square of sky for a half wheel
and the peanuts he handed me,
one thing leads to another.

Also in the “monologues with a minor god”  series: At the corner café