On the train up from the World Trade Center last night, from the PATH and the lost world of Newark New Jersey, I read this poem on an ad board posting of the MTA. The author, 14, was the winner of the 6-8 grade category of a poetry contest commemorating 100 years of subway "service."

I am charmed by silver
snake-like trains slithering
contently in black-pitted dens,
corridors flooded by taut masses
have beautifully woven, diverse peoples
A boundless threshold of adventure fulfilled
with the simple slide
of a card

Kesi Augustine
St. Clare School
Queens, NY

Whatever it's merits -- and I do like it -- I was interested in the writer's use of the word "contently," instead of "contendedly" in connection with subway trains; in the interpolation to charmer snakes; in various possible oxymorons: the metaphors of 'taut floods,' and 'boundless thresholds.' And I wondered at the comma, whether it was intentional, merely nervous, or a teacher's besmirching. (Though the last two lines are unfortunate, I assume they were an entrance requirement of the contest.) A young adolescent walks the boundary of naive and elegant, or all deliberate?

To sleep, perhance to dream
of Yogi Berra.

("Yogi"?)