I am the blur of smooth pebbles,
a clouded silhouette of petal blooms
holding to the railway timber.
I fall gently to the rush of the
train raging past as sudden as
a storm; its sides etched like
frescoes decorating ancient cavern
walls, in angry challenges and
aerosol confessions of love.
Inside the berth, is a stillness
viewed from the picture window where
his forehead rests.
The train's throat groans, dry
as a summer drought.
It has seen cooler fields of blue meadow grasses
seeded with ponds and well-kept cottages
and little fishing boats, tied and ready.
But still it returns, trumpeting through the
muddle of lovers and transitory
scrawlings on the wall.
From the lower bunk he looks
deliberately through the glass to
comprehend the man he has become.
He wonders at pieces of earth flashing by, to center
any sense of it all. Too near to the quick,
too close to nerve endings of life, creosote
hangs in the air.
Look away from the dusted blooms.
Look away from the pebble's reach,
across the meadow to the clearness of a
rising hill, to streams raining down a
pine-covered mountain peak.
The deep hollow sound bellows full
until the humming of a train falls
to the quiet of
a single petal bloom.