AMTRACK, HEADING NORTH
Slow train
through the wastes,
scrubby
fields bordered with junkyards.
Berry-bushes,
orange grasses,
a hill
with a broadcast tower.
An elegant
gate,
unhinged,
that must
once
have been
an entry.
Rusty.
Rusty metal.
Rusty
grasses.
A duck,
and its wake.
Nacreous
water under sudden clouds.
A tumult
of clouds toward sundown.
a
sky-battle westward.
These
trees that will die in water.
Gray
building against a gray sky, but in
the sky a
glow of light,
a hope of
weather. The building
a
slaughter house.
And the
river broadens toward bay-water.
The bay.
Marshlands.
Now,
quilted cumulus, tremendous and close.
A dead
tree
points as
if shrieking.
Clouds
eating and
spewing light. The town
a toy
beneath them. The ground could
open, but
the sky?
Across the
aisle a girl waves strangely,
palm
erect, fingers straight,
hinged at
the knuckles. Saying
goodbye.
Her mouth and chin wrinkled against tears.
All gray
now—on the sound
wavelets.
Its thin
reflection keeps pace with the train, and the land
and the
water and sky
don't
swallow anything.
Even in
darkness the sky wheels,
the train
moves
forward, the sun
west, my
body
a society
of motion.
Across the
way
she sucks
at her collar.
Whatever
comfort.
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