This is the song of
the coal trains as
they creak their rusty
way past the
broken bottles glimmering
faint in the tall grass like
starlight;
the lament as they blast
through fields hung
thick with ghostgray
fog & earlymorning gloom -
thru midwestern
backyards of chained-up dogs
and the season's last marigolds.
This is the song I
hear when I pass them
in the night, driving too
fast around curves in
the wooded roads, in &
out of patches of light;
orange light, blank darkness,
yellow moon.
Roads I could drive with my
eyes closed, every twist and
bend and bump I know
like tiny imperfections
on a lover's body.
But I have been away
too long from this lover,
sleeping in the arms of others;
there are changes that
surprise me -
factories ripped apart,
electric guts spilling
out
the skeletons of condos
being covered over with
a skin of bricks & drywall.
We are strangers.
My moods are changeable
as the lake, my love, my love -
not even (like the ocean)
ruled by the moon,
but by the winds and
weather's crazy whims;
now smooth and turquoise
as beachglass
now dark and
reckless, bashing herself
against the rocks.