What I Assume

Waiting at the Platform

Waiting at the platform I watched
you foreign
reading billboard and posters pasted up
just for you,
till, squealing not slowing, the train rushed in,
blasted a wrapper and tugged at your skirt.

Then I saw your ghost
laughing with the one you love, your summer dress shone,
brilliant in the blinding sun
its fibers draped on the needling grassy field.
With chins on each other's shoulders
you made a Janus facing North and South:
Both looking forward, and both behind;
one in the now and one somewhere else;
minds wandering equidistance.

Your curling smiled shrank and I guessed
through your dress you felt a nettle stinging
smooth and unsullied flesh
your joy skin failing while the summer wind cooled to
a sudden cold gust.
One face shivered
the other petrified
in the gray sky's light that summer dress
clung to you like a shroud.

With the rain slobbering off the roof
I tracked through trails of mud and trash
to pass across the platform.
Though you were going East
and my train headed West
like a lab rat aroused
I ignore all sense and stimuli
for you are in my sight.

But between us the work-a-day crowd
broke
and then there was that passing tang,
three benches, a newspaper stand,
a fat drop of water in the face.

By their delay a season passed,
something in me germinated,
strangled my steering, tangled it's tendrils
around my will.
Married to the furrow of the earth I plowed
I go only where the stuttering train
the blundering train
the plummeting train can take me.