BY TRAIN TO SEATTLE
Friday, May 9, 2008

The underbelly of the world is reserved
for train tracks and cast offs,
but I remember once in France
a train fast as a bullet sped
though fields of sunflowers,
so maybe it’s only in New Jersey
and, oh yeah, San Diego
detritus accumulates where trains run.

But wait awhile and as with mourning
the worst of it disappears,
not all at once but in snatches
of beauty unexpected; I remember
a deer looking up unsurprised
at my train window in California
and there was the time in Canada
when a moose seemed not to notice.