Another train

cabell county sky | douglas imbrogno | 2009

ANOTHER TRAIN

My ink-stained hands
hear the sound of the railroad, another train
passing through my town

here at
the middle of nowhere
and everything.

On the porch, the perfect
circles of Honduran cigar smoke
smell like dirt and bourbon,

the sun a vast memory, the
cold dark triumphant.
I have been here on the edge

of this cliff, pondering
how edges offer answers to both
the suicide and the poet.

Looking up, the purple
godless sky swallows
the day’s catastrophes

of which there have been many,
as usual. In that yawning chasm
all the world’s screams

are like the echo
of a distant
yelp.