*
At eight the train pulls through, announced by its brutal horn.
The trail behind grows louder, the rumbling of the cars
against their tracks, a rough release of mourning.
I can’t ignore it where I am. I hear the alarm
as if it were on my nightstand. Soon it will fade
and I will go back to myself. I don’t deny that it’s hard
to say what that is. Nevertheless, we burn through days
as if there will always be more. Only, tonight I doubt
the number. I question the stars and even the haze
between us. My life must make that sound
I think, a train pulled over tracks, not by any grace
but rather force and fear of leaving something out.
So how do I answer you, how do I speak to evening’s face,
You ask where I go when my eyes elude you.
What can I say, when I don’t have a name for that place
that makes nowhere and here, at once, both true.
And why do I answer now, why, when you’re not even here?
Because the question wasn’t asked or meant strictly for you.
I was there and involved in the asking, so need to hear
where it goes. And now, because I am a part of everything,
I hear the church clock chime the hour and disappear
so cars in the street can be heard. And then he sings,
some drunk, up to a shuttered window, and the closing of doors
behind people coming home. But what do I bring
with my listening? Why have I not answered you before.
Where do I go? Where. Listen, a song is playing in the distance,
building to the clouds and crashing to the floor.
I get caught in it’s travels, turns, the interludes, the twists
and sometimes I truly believe that it won’t end,
because I am too beaten to even raise my fist.
I have had enough of mourning, and so pretend
that it doesn’t touch me. I watch where this is heading
as if it were the second act of a play I watch again.
Because it is. Still, I want to be surprised, instead
of always knowing how much will be lost
in between the sounds and what is said.
-Brent Allard
"But first, baby, as you climb and count the stairs (and they total the same), did you, sometime or somewhere, have a different idea?
Is this, baby, what you were born to feel, and do, and be?"
-Kenneth Fearing
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Friday, September 10, 2010
September Drive
*
Everyone on the road tonight
is nodding at the wheel.
The darkness is a vapor settled on
the windshield. Headlights can’t pierce
the fog that swallows daylight, pulls
away the hours much too early.
I have this conversation with
myself. Night on the Everett
Turnpike will not listen; its silence, more black
than the tar. I’m wedged between shades of
darkness. From the passenger’s seat,
you trust me to know where I am
going and would listen if I turned
to you and said, “It’s dark tonight,”
or “I think I’ve been lost since
the morning I was born,” and if
I said “The night is a raven’s
eyelid, closed.,” tonight, on this road,
you could get it.
you’d give me a look that says, “No,
that isn’t crazy.” The other
cars traveling this stretch of road,
mercifully, are quiet, except
for their wheels pulling up against road;
another mile- another mile- another mile
towards home.
-Brent Allard
Everyone on the road tonight
is nodding at the wheel.
The darkness is a vapor settled on
the windshield. Headlights can’t pierce
the fog that swallows daylight, pulls
away the hours much too early.
I have this conversation with
myself. Night on the Everett
Turnpike will not listen; its silence, more black
than the tar. I’m wedged between shades of
darkness. From the passenger’s seat,
you trust me to know where I am
going and would listen if I turned
to you and said, “It’s dark tonight,”
or “I think I’ve been lost since
the morning I was born,” and if
I said “The night is a raven’s
eyelid, closed.,” tonight, on this road,
you could get it.
you’d give me a look that says, “No,
that isn’t crazy.” The other
cars traveling this stretch of road,
mercifully, are quiet, except
for their wheels pulling up against road;
another mile- another mile- another mile
towards home.
-Brent Allard
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)