By Julie Shapiro
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
BATTERY PARK CITY — A pair of construction workers stood up from their lunch table in the World Financial Center Thursday afternoon and approached a woman handing out free poems.
The workers, who are building One World Trade Center, asked if they could have a couple of the verse-inscribed cards, and then they settled back down to read them.
"This is pretty good," said Ed Oakley, 56, who makes a living installing ventilation systems.
"Huh, it's very appropriate, actually," said his friend Jim Hepburn, 49, who is also a steamfitter.
Oakley's poem was from "Passing Through: A Haiku Sequence" by Cor van den Heuvel, and it was a favorite among the many people who received it as part of the city's ninth annual Poem In Your Pocket Day:
evening coming
people rushing home to change
into other lives
"It's great," Oakley said. "It just says what it is: People leave their job, and they change into different lives."
With a grin, he added, "I can't wait to change my life at 5 o'clock."
That personal connection to poetry is exactly what Poets House Executive Director Lee Briccetti hoped people would experience after receiving one of the four free poems volunteers gave out in Battery Park City on Thursday.
"When people bump into poems, they can find something that surprises them," Briccetti said. "We believe in the power of poetry to reach people."
All of the poems that were distributed on Thursday — which also included "Riding Backwards on a Train" by James Hoch, "Cities of the Morning" by Muriel Rukeyser and "blessing the boats" by Lucille Clifton — are also part of a new project that will put snippets of poetry on PATH trains.
Along These Lines, co-sponsored by Poets House and the Port Authority, will soon display a rotating selection of 10 poems related to travel on PATH trains, in stations and on video screens, Briccetti said. The idea for the partnership came from a conversation Briccetti had with Port Authority Executive Director Chris Ward, who Briccetti said is a poetry fan.
During Thursday's poetry giveaway, some workers, residents and tourists rushed past the Poets House interns and volunteers, but many others paused to take a verse. One group of home-schooled children from all over the city even made small paper pockets for the occasion and stuffed their poems in those.
Debbie Francis, 45, who works in finance and picked up the haiku, said the poem was a good break from her high-tech routine.
"It's pretty cool," she said. "It's a nice thing to think about."
Judith Hendricks, 73, a Battery Park City resident who also picked up the haiku, responded to it with a small rhyme of her own.
"I'm delighted we're celebrating poetry," she said, "which is a higher-minded thing in these days and times, where low is the way we go."
