Bells are heard before the lights, before the gates automatic jut
downward and clang. The car clock says not yet 5:30.
This train is early. Stopping at my place in line,
seven cars back, I watch four engines pull past.
The horizon over the rise black with their bodies, filled
with their rickety groan on tracks. This train is long.
This train is heavy. Then the list begins looping
its route like a marquee’s: milk, chicken, some sort of
pork and red meat, cheese (shredded for tacos), bread,
toothpaste. What to cook for dinner? Should I dust? Must sweep
and mop up juice stickiness. Did he mean to say that
just then? Decoder ring, decoder ring. Begin laundry –
sort, wash, dry. Fold the heaps of familiar then stack.
*
But – oh – I want to read something! I want to sit.
To quiet. To rest. Stretching arms back, up and long
to rocket white ceiling, arcing out from black interior
with a sigh, with a wanting Oh! For a moment, I think,
to gather different, to see invisible.
*
The Intrepid’s lights click white like eyes open and look
back at me. Slowly with intention, he backs into C&W’s lot.
He makes an excellent three point turn around. When he sticks
his nose out between the lined cars, he looks both ways. And I laugh.
There will be no oncoming traffic. This is the habit of the cautious,
of the safe. Others follow, moving into and out of the heathered gray
parking lots that match the sky today. I watch them reverse themselves
slowly then speed back the way they came. The air they move smells
of oil and ash. It crunches. I move forward over and down
the rise, three car lengths then four then five.
*
Tagged and labeled freight cars rhythmically wobble and jerk
closer, beat and measure filling my space and window, rocking
my car with lumbering metal chugs. I stare at the reflectors. I lean back
fully to blur with narrow eyes. Theirs is slightly off from my own
subtle beat of heart and head.
*
In the margins, I see the forsythia bushes. Shameless yellow
fountains surround a telephone pole. I open, turn to the corner to see.
Out of place here in the decay and rot, in an area people just pass, on
a road that people don’t stop unless seeking a quick cure or the gates
close. Perhaps they were planted to hide the wires, perhaps to hide
the base, perhaps when the company-less building was new, fresh
with paint, and named, a woman dug in dirt four small holes and tended.
Their blooms are like bells. No leaves are required. They sprout straight
from stem without apology, without cover, in clusters creating one long
bold breath of flower. I can’t recall the name of this kind of growth where
hundreds create one. I know it has a name. We name things. We catalog.
We line up and list.
*
The honk from behind jolts me. It is my turn to move forward to bump over
the tracks. The line of cars on this side is long, filled with impatience.
And I wonder as they pass over and by if they too see the yellow,
the bushes afire on the other side.
__________________
In response to L.L. Barkat’s “Streetwise” and Random Act of Poetry request at High Calling Blogs
This…
Shameless yellow
fountains surround a telephone pole.
🙂
Like kids on the playground, like bullies, yet not at all. Like lovers surrounding, pursuing, cornering. Love the ambiguity.
again, such a different world from the one I know, but you bring it to life…
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I love this. Just the simple rhythm of its ideas. It resonates with me. 🙂