By Joe Engel

(This poem was previously published in “Harpur Palate”)

The rusty train cars are twenty 

empty handed merchants sitting

silent but ready like always;

stubborn in the wind which whips

a lash of brittle howls across this iron

framed picture of sleep, this

ubiquitous breeze, flustered 

by forgotten ways of freight, tosses 

a Bailey hat into its own mouth.

Between the tracks there’s a young man 

casting dreams of romance in drags

off his cigarette and swigs 

from a bottle of whiskey.

He sits in light as thin as mist

on a pile of books

which a drifter sees

with hands like flint,

wide-eyed for warmth.

Though, someone tends

to all these snoring beasts,

to all this graffiti

with a yawning gait 

and a flashlight, for hope,

who knows 

every crater on the moon

by name and has taken

to making up constellations.

His wife is the light on at home

who drinks up the wine

and is used to the cold 

side of their bed except nights

that her burning arm

finds their dog Orion, her smoke.

Dragging into home burnt and early,

their bedroom door blares open 

to his red eyes full of choked out sun,

of thoughts on vagrants

or what might have howled 

down between the trains.

He brings the smell 

of night and granite and tar

which makes her more awake,

coughs a bit and then

in full eclipse

begins to pull the shades.