TRACK 28

Track 28

now I am thick with memory
something in these wet windows
and fog smothered roofs
in the glistening slate and brick
I hear the mumble of commuters
and smell the long tunnels
scraped steel and railroad ties,
puddles, the trench coats
and shopping bags and brief cases
rush slowly up the track
and squeeze into the bar car
where we lurch
and what we are lurching into
the tides, the wind,
wet wool and anonymous
emergencies, collide

the eroded faces of men
sinking into smoke and gin,
replenished lips kissing the dented
pillow and the ink of their mouths
wasted in streams
the water that feeds dead rivers
the wind that whittles rock
and the rough shadow of whiskers
on the 5:40 out of Grand Central
boarded up buildings flashing
like billboards in the Bronx

the indistinct time
patters on the glass
the speech of public places
suggestions left behind
“watch the closing doors”
between cars rocking
this glass is splashed with light
I am enticed I enter faces
enclosed in a globe of rain
the shaped lips and jowls
of folk who lie in graves
like the littered war dead
or in beds in the wards
of forgetful 98 year olds
with glasses of Old Yeller
wandering the Ambien dark
in open calico muumuus