Train Station

the whole night in a circle of starlight
passports weren’t even checked
	three centuries turned into a railroad car
	that runs the black expanse
	of five hours’ choreographed sleep
	as the dead awoke and a fight began
	between two facing seats in the dining car
i boarded the train to the end of the station
	i kissed the doors of a stradivarius violin
	i talked with two drunken cigars
	i spent hours discussing plane geometry
	with the contours of fellow passengers’ brains
	watching the ice-capped peaks
	of the sailing ships as they drifted by
even though i’m not in love with melancholy anymore
	they’d named it the street of the train station
	even though its course bordered the lake
	that swallowed the sun     by night
	and spent the morning trying to find its reflection
	the castles     the theaters
	the entire opera i’d made up for both of us
	shimmered upside down in the wisdom of
	the lake’s apparent emptiness
	i kissed the doors of la scala for you
	and tasted     sweet     lake water
    
    
    

from Yew Nork (2014)