For years I belonged to a neighborhood gym
in Brooklyn: a brownstone transformed, crooked floors
and all, by weight machines, rubber matting,
turquoise paint galore, a youthful staffeating
take-out from the Italian place next door.
I’d thread my way between body builders
taut and ornery as prize boars, performing
my 20-pound reps, invisible, as I assumed.
When I moved to Manhattan I dropped the gym,
but emerging from the subway one evening
I glimpsed a man I recognized, a silent
lifter of light weights who never socialized—
compact of body and purpose—whose face
in the crowd shone back like a private moon.