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96 Please Be Patient Crawling inexorably toward Queensboro Plaza, the N train calls upon me to meditate on the nature of patience, its flabby jowls and placid mouth, its mild eye. What’s your hurry? Nothing much, unless you count the deadline of sanity, the fate of civilization, the continuation of life as we know it. Dear Patience, how can such a bulky dame vanish behind a pole, teen-like in tight jeans, just when I really need you? Teach me your secret, explain the way breath can slow, the mind unlock its ceiling trap-door and slip beyond the crowds on the Express platform, the bakery with its writhing line of supplicants for coffee and everything bagels, nannies and musicians dodging trucks at Seventy-Second and Broadway? How can I wait and wait, bland as cream cheese, when I try transferring to the Number Seven to speed my trip and find it just as sludged as any other line? Patience, cruelest of muses, I’ll pay the going rate for a yellow cab to oblivion, that old café on Amsterdam where I can chew and safely swallow, I’ll buy you cappuccino and croissants if you’ll stay just an hour, warm me with your pedestrian gaze, hum along with the radio until they change the station. ...

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