Taste

I taste asphalt every time I swallow.

It is the flavor of this station
In my life while I wait
                                    between
                                                  trains.
Sometimes I dream about sweet hay and honeysuckle
but then I remember the nettles, the sting of the honey bee,
and I look around at the city.

There are lights so high here they have forgotten the roads that twist below them.
There are windows so high here you can look out eye level with God
                                                                                                      —or someone.
There are people so high here, they think they’ve found what they’re looking for.

I don’t know, maybe they were never looking at all.

Maybe I’m the only one on this cold bench, waiting for the rumble over the tracks
with the film of a sleepless city coating my tongue, like a bad drink.

I look one way down the tracks,
                                            and then the other—no train.
Sometimes I wonder, what if there are two trains coming for me,
and in one horrific tangle of iron and smoke,
they collide and scatter my prospects all around me? Junk. Litter. Train bits.

Oh well, I think. I’ll get used to the taste.