MTA Poetry in Motion-Billy Collins' "Subway" an Appropo & Engaging Poem

Sunday, on my way into the subway at Colombus Circle, there was a massive, peaceful demonstration challenging positions of the president-elect Donald Trump.   People gathered in a united purpose of freely voice their views with signs imploring Trump to act & deploring his purported intentions.   My daily descent down into the subway garnered a more meaningful experience.  Our communal means of  shared transportation felt more unifying and humbling.  We tend to take for granted the close proximity that binds us as a community and the commitments we feel obligated to each other & to our individual conscience.  Poet/professor Billy Collins (b Amer 1941) was honored as a US Poet Laureat (2001.)  His succinct prose strikes a solid message of strength, inspiration & humility.  "SUBWAY" was commissoned to celebrate the Gramd Cemtral Centenial.  I noted the poem this afternoon on a subway car riding underground while crowds gathered above to voice their political views & conscience in the the day's sunshine:

As you fly swift underground
with a song in your ears
or lost in the maze of a book

Remember the ones who descended here
into the mire of bedrock
to bore a hole through the granite

to clear a passage for you
where there was only darkness
Remeber me as you come up into the light