Salvaged II

Train Ride
One speeding refuge from baking on cement
My train home.
A dollar thirty for a twenty-minute trip
Whiz by houses, apartments.
Distracted momentarily by a smile and a wink
He has nicotine stains and mile-long arms
Thanks, but no thanks.

Yet another midnight journey.
But tonight, I cost sixty cents more.
I don't notice her sitting next to me until she sneezes
Barely human, she is all bones and cloth.
A hundred empty seats surround me.
Why here? Why me?!

She coughs again:
"Sorry, I have a cold." Her eyes are sunken.
She asks me where I'm going.
Lions Park.
"Sunnyside," she says.

We talk. She laughs quietly, with her eyes.
Her name is Pam, but she likes ‘Pigeon' better.
She leaves at her stop. Leaves me with a gift of a birthday candle.
It takes the world to lift her up.

I hate what I do next.
I check for my wallet, the quarters in my coat pocket.
Pigeon I can trust, not her needs.

On my train rides I have met hundreds of people:
Two Haitian sisters, a Russian woman with no English.
An Englishman with lung cancer.
Men in suits with sly smiles and low hands.
Bag ladies and bums with more class than business people.
The same people with glass eyes and too many words.

The train scares me,
Track rhythms soothe me.
Every ride is a fight.

Retrieval

A crash of thoughts
and a parliament of words
come wave after wave.
My silly blue bucket cannot
hope to catch a mouthful.

Benign understandings
of malignant concepts
seem much to common
and curiously over-used

A mermaid's glove
finally reaches out
and takes my vessel

Now it is mysteriously filled
and I leave satisfied.

Along with a discarded glove...

Powerless

Who am I

to tell you about

each dewy summer evening:

watching the sun cling

to every blade of grass?

How can I

tell you about

the smell of going out:

mother's perfume and father's shaving lotion

helping to attach the clasp

of a stubborn string of pearls?

When will I

tell you about

those secret morning runs:

the wind crushing your lungs

stopping to tie a shoe

with muddy laces?

Who am I

to tell you about

each sensory field:

one fruitless motion after another

taking your paper cup to fill it

with stale water?

Souvenirs

he echo in a seashell,
I have heard,
is not the ocean caught
in the smooth curvatures of
a vacated home:
but the rhythm of
life pumping in your ear

(For Mum)