Waiting on the train platform in thicksoled
winter boots and a scarf made by a friend
in the middle of an Argentinean reunion,
I find myself whistling the chorus of “If I Only
Had A Brain.” Today, shapes of water towers
and the palisades are very dear to me: one
a private chamber from a mechanized fairtytale,
the other a snow-ruled wall announcing
New Jersey. I’m on my way to see a dancer,
a music writer (red-headed), and a friend
whom I once informed was unphotogenic
and with whom I could sit on a bench
forever (and very nearly have). I’m in love
and in love and in love all at the same time
though it’s rare for a person to believe this
without use of their eyebrows. There are places
in Ohio I will never touch. There is an image
of a father vomiting into the outdoor aisle
of a baseball game that has yet to reach
its date of expiration. Perhaps we speak
with the verbs that grew us: awake, embrace,
record, replay. Perhaps the technology
of the VCR more accurately suits our human
love of angles holding time. Somewhere
in America, someone I have yet to meet
is halted in the walkable night, suctioned
to two conflicting ideas at once. I may be both
of these ideas. I may thieve one of these notions
like a gift I was owed as a child and permit myself
no remorse. The Hudson River was clean, then filthy.
Now it’s swimmable. This is only the beginning
of trains today, only the first gesticulation away
from coal and its misbehaved mythology.
panache, perhaps 