Dispatch #160

poem composed on a train

            Northern Tracks


Ferns flash dark, 
chafe train windows 
relieved by graffiti: 
faded white runes
scrawled on 
an underpass slant.
Barbed-wire fence
wrapped around 
cracked concrete, 
crabgrass, green 
plastic bags
ballooning light.
A sign reads
SPECIAL METALS
as we coast into
a ghost town—
half a ghost, 
at least, lingering.
Every window 
in every building 
broken—one 
with a branch
lanced into it. 
Tree and house
fused, as if
attached 
to the same
decaying root 
system. A freight 
train passes
in the opposite
direction, loaded
with fertilizer:
green and white
sacks stacked and
blurred into blue 
that looks
like memory, 
a memory 
barely there, 
washed out—
still enough 
to sting. How
sight stings when 
things scroll
at this speed;
particulars
particlized.
Yellow sweep 
of brown,
of black,
of summer
that hasn't 
released into
fall. First
day of fall,
today—
muggy and
bright. But 
the air’s
hollow edge
foreshadows
October. Now 
the car’s 
flanked by 
factories
in pieces 
weeds and 
abandoned
mattresses 
cinch together. 
It's true: No-
thing’s un-
inhabited. No-
thing goes un-
reclaimed. Red 
leaves radiate 
in dense brush 
bordering woods. 
Red sticks 
to my peripheral 
vision, stains it, 
while highway 
streaks horizon: 
red striations
thread the glare. 
Slow, close 
to a station.
Algae skirts 
a brick wall's 
bent reflection
where pond 
meets mud,
knotted brush, 
roots buckled
aboveground.
The view opens—
opening completely 
to the Connecticut 
River; the surface
wrinkling what's 
left of the day.