Besides the halo of a distant town 
	or stars netted in pines, 
black, set far up on a ridge,
	there seems little to report 
from the windows of a passing train.
	You see the cold moon sails 
a sea of grass someone parted with their knees, 
	wading out, the line, just glimpsed, 
and somehow grave because it fails suddenly, 
	and so that you wonder who lies there, 
or for how long, no evidence of him 
	or her having trailed back.  
Didn’t you, once, want to cut your own 
	line out, even if it was only to shout back,
No, not this way. Didn’t you
	want to part the fabric of the world?
Recall unzipping your girl’s jeans, 
	a warm spring rain, and you descending
into that brief church the tall grass made. 
	How did you know you’d never be the same?
Not nineteen and leaving home for good.
	Wasn’t it the way she kept opening
and closing her eyes to those splinters of rain 
	to look at you as for the first time 
that scared you, seeing how close love was
	to loss? And hasn’t it always been?
And, now, the train hurtling the distance
	and the porter smiling with beautiful teeth
leaning to offer the consolation of a gin
	though memory briefly offers you the same, 
before the windows go abruptly dark 
	as you fly, entering thickets and the trees.