Elements
       

There must be a train station
never arrived at

smoky boxcar teak
and rum; a dark Jamaican

who won't say a lot. Eyes, small
dimes behind frames

furniture heavy, but attentive
to a woman

speaking in oboes, clay Florida
moons under her nails.

Think: agreement. Bouquets
beneath polyester.

And somewhere between Rochester
and Milwaukee, eyes latch

and hold. Possibly baseball
cards, a pint of Hot Damn

or cardboard towns scraping dark
landscapes by.

Think: someone nearly gorgeous.
A name without a saint. Loyal

to the Mets. (An optimist.)
Ways we fall

asleep, hands entwined. Crook
to crook, rocking. Some dreams,

they don't arrive
on the backs of tossing

ponies—but for now, everything is
beginning, the boxcar and muscular silk

against closed eyes, his sleepy
way of guessing

the number of miles by
the dust in her hair.

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Copyright © 2012 Nicole Terez Dutton All rights reserved
from If One Us Should Fall
University of Pittsburgh Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission