Field Notes on the Betrayal of Light

Cyclopian eye scans the indigo sky over Highland Park Zoo. Midsummer
gets sick on the lushness of leaves and the queasy wee hours stick to skin
with their packets of dew. Twice, I fell asleep to awaken as quickly,
seeing the man I love fall from a roof with impossible pitch. Other nights,
it's a car crash I wake to prevent. Both hands on the window sill, I follow
the searchlight's push through charcoal scrim.

Don't know what I'd do without him.

~
If the train wails through the night at intervals,
it's because we need this emblematic sound

to post our longing far and wide. The longer
the train, the longer the wail, accompanied

by headlight's penetration of the dark and
oily walls. More to-the-bone than baby squalls,

the wailing carries freight beyond the frights
of day-to-day survival. My train is five cars

long, each one a decade stuffed with metal,
wood, glass, the decay of living matter,

chatter. Each car's claustrophobia of chatter
rolls so silently through veins of night,

and those long wails are all that I can hear,
and this prone body's all that's really here.