This train stop at Liberty Airport
used to be fields, now folks rush
into the city, going home or away
to a new beginning. I find myself
checking for grips & horn cases,
musicians coming in for cutting
contests at clubs & dives lit blue
& woodshedding a thousand miles
away, returning home to loved ones
& flings the other side of wild
acts in small towns, & bouquets
withering in glossy cellophane.
For years, I saw burnt emptiness
& heard a howl of sirens rise out
of Newark’s brutal air. The unrest
left how many dead? I remember
an inbred taint smell of corruption
smoldering in ease, palms greased
at station houses & funeral homes—
the whole damn effigy with its guts
hanging out, dragged through streets
by a two-tone run-away limousine
driven by a dead man in a tuxedo.
At the next stop, a throng of voices
stumbles in. Was there a ball game
somewhere, & am I the only one
caught with Return of Secaucus 7
in my head while improvising
a score on a phantom Selmer alto?
Sunlight glances off marsh reeds
late November, not even a note
of snow forecasted. The season
is abnormally simple, a swish
in tall grass along the railroad
quick as two or three animals
moving into a sway, or a lonely
mind off on its own. A small cloud
rises from those watery weeds,
& sounds shake up from humid
shadows underneath this world
between worlds, raising a waste land
of chemical plants, & I say to myself,
You know, I’m lucky to be alive,
feathers clinging to ragged stalks
as a sign of the future burning.
The grass whitens just before
the tunnel swallows a mouthful
of blackness, & then I can see
fictitious mole people lurking
as the locomotive speeds up.
But I know the pressure of air
only changed slightly, locked
inside our belief of bedrock
& steel holding up the river.