"Comfort" [by Stephanie Bolster]

A Spanish man who rides the métro daily,
open-palmed, delivering a discourse on his poverty,
puts his face to the chimpanzee’s glass.

To be in there. Warm hay and tires, oranges,
and look how the mother presses the young one close.

If he took this city by the neck
and shook, would the strand break,
pearls roll into corners?

The métro runs under,
faces he could spend an hour watching
if the earth were made of glass.

Stephanie Bolster edited The Best Canadian Poetry in English 2008 (Molly Peacock, series editor).
Published in The Antigonish Review #135, Autumn 2003, as part of “Ménagerie du Jardin des Plantes,” a series of nine linked poems, "Comfort" will appear in Stephanie Bolster's new book, A Page from the Wonders of Life on Earth, due out from Brick Books in 2011.