Vox Populi
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Robbi Nester: Busker in the Subway
I’ve spent a lot of time on subways, so I understand
their etiquette, rules on behavior in crowded places
where people might be high or full of rage, unbalanced
in a hundred different ways. I’ve seen buskers on city
streetcorners but never in subway stations, sometimes
empty and abandoned. In such spaces, it’s not safe
to look a stranger in the eye.
Recently, I watched a video on YouTube in which a cellist
plays in a white-tiled subway station outside a pizza stand,
where, I’m certain, the scent of pepperoni mingles with old urine.
Crowds pass to strains of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. At first,
people just keep walking. They have trains to catch,
but the notes keep rising, and soon, a small crowd gathers,
admiring the burnished box, savoring its resonance,
the strength of the musician’s bowing arm, muscles taut
as an Olympian’s. Coins begin to rain into his cigar box,
a few folded bills. Small children seek the deep source
of the sound. An old man with waist-length dreadlocks
puts down his heavy pack and sighs. People forget
the meetings they might miss, till one by one, people
start to look around at all the others, realizing
they are not alone, and someone smiles.
~~~~~
Copyright 2025 Robbi Nester
Robbi Nester is a poet, writer, and retired educator. She is the author of four books of poetry—a chapbook, Balance (White Violet, 2012), and three collections—A Likely Story (Moon Tide, 2014), Other-Wise (Kelsay, 2017), and Narrow Bridge (Main Street Rag, 2019).
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“People forget
the meetings they might miss, till one by one, people
start to look around at all the others, realizing
they are not alone, and someone smiles.”
Just look what art and music can do! ❤️
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I love the way your work gradually transports us out of rush and bustle until we enter into harmony with the musician, his listeners, and each reader of your poem. Thank you for this piece, Robbi!
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moments of beauty that keep us from drowning.
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I love the way Robbi lets the moment of beauty stand for itself.
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yes. I like that too.
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Oh yes. Poems keep our heads above water
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Love this, Robbie. You capture an important story well and specifically, yet leave something mysterious & sublime in the air for us all to float in at the finish. Thank you.
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Robbi! (no “e”, beg pardon)
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How comforting a poem, Robbi — thank you for it, and thank you for reminding me of all those moments when I felt quietly peaceful, in a small group of people just standing there and — for a brief & blessed moment — allowing the music to unite us…
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You’ve captured the magic, which gathers strangers together in a moment of shared happiness on the midst of everyday grime. My sister used to busk in subways with her viola.
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Oh Robbi! This is beautiful, humane in the truest sense. I’ve never been on a NY subway, but I can see and smell the mix, a little like most urban allies: urine, some kind of bus or other exhaust, cigarettes on peoples clothes, sweat. And then without discounting the usual subway etiquette, the unsafety and dirt, your busker transforms it, you do, narrating the transformation so carefully, leaving us like the audience with the beginnings of a smile. Thank you Robbi and Michael!
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Thank you! Needed this poem to get up and face the day. Smiling.
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thanks so much for this. You brought back many memories of the buskers I saw and met and loved in Chicago when I lived there.
here’s a piece of a poem I wrote about one of them.
A black man with a necklace of plastic
baby dolls, every one of them as naked
as Baby Jesus, dances in front of the bank.
He is singing that every time it rains
it rains pennies from heaven, heaven.
I love these songs sung by men with no wives,
no homes, no dinners of southern-fried steak
and mashed potatoes, no dreams of anything
but this gray sidewalk and a foolish dancing step.
Songs like this will let a woman in a blue scarf
with yellow flowers know that he too is someone
without hope or dreams. This song will urge her
to take him home and sit him down at a table
that smells like some Sunday afternoon dinner
he will always remember, even in the moments
before he dies, no matter how he dies or where
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Thanks for this, John.
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Love this poem. I’ve lived and/or worked in NY for nearly 36 years and this captures that subway experience so well and also the beauty, the hope in the midst of the grime and unease, its ability to renew itself over and over. It may be a place that wears its crazy on its sleeve but wears its creativity and innovation there. What a grand, uplifting poem. Thank you Robbi and Michael
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Thanks, Mike. What a lovely comment, a poem in itself.
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I love how this takes us through subways where people might be “unbalanced in a hundred different ways” and ends with people “realizing they are not alone, and someone smiles”. What a heartening poem. Thank you for this beauty.
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Lovely comment, Jan. Thank you so much for being here…
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oh so sorry..my comment posted but I should have said Thank you ROBBI. I am very sorry
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Oh, Robbi, this is such an uplifting poem. Thank you, Robbi, thank you Michael. “People forget / the meetings they might miss, till one by one, people / start to look around at all the others, realizing / they are not alone, and someone smiles.”
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Oh, yes. A very compassionate poem…
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What heart. In so many ways, this poem is full of it. I won’t write more because my comments tend to get swallowed by the mysterious and hungry Comment gods, but in case this one gets through… Thank you, Catherine, thank you Michael. I needed this.
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Beautiful!
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Oh, what an “upper” this poem is! There is hope for people after all.
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We need to be reminded constantly that there is hope for us after all.
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Hope is our mother
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