And The Trains Go On

We stood at the back door of the shop in the night air while a line of box cars of soured wheat and pop bottles uncoupled and was sent creaking down our spur. Once, when I unsealed a car and the two of us strained the door open with a groan of rust, an old man stepped out and tipped his hat. 'It's all yours, boys!' and he went off, stiff-legged, smelling of straw and shit. I often wonder whose father he was and how long he kept moving until the police found him, ticketless, sleeping in a 2nd class waiting room and tore the cardboard box out of his hands and beat him until the ink of his birth smudged and surrendered its separate vowels. In the great railyard of Milano the dog with the white throat and the soiled muzzle crossed and recrossed the tracks 'searching for his master,' said the boy, but his grandfather said, 'No. He was sent by God to test the Italian railroads.' When I lie down at last to sleep inside a boxcar of coffins bound for the villages climbing north will I waken in a small station where women have come to claim what is left of glory? Or will I sleep until the silver bridge spanning the Mystic River jabs me awake, and I am back in a dirty work shirt that says Phil, 24 years old, hungry and lost, on the run from a war no one can win? I want to travel one more time with the wind whipping in the open door, with you to keep me company, back the long tangled road that leads us home. Through Flat Rock going east picking up speed, the damp fields asleep in moonlight. You stand beside me, breathing the cold in silence. When you grip my arm hard and lean way out and shout out the holy names of the lost neither of us is scared and our tears mean nothing.