Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg

I’m On the Train to Somewhere

The blond fields bunch up in the speed
of the cold window as I tilt toward sleep
but look! The wingtip of a hawk,
a fox rushing underground into tomorrow.

When I was five, I jumped chair to chair
over a concrete floor and missed.
We soared in the station wagon to the hospital,
my father thrilled to finally use his siren.

The train screeches its brakes like gulls crying,
so eager to arrive at a stopping point
in the stillness of another train yard
and cars put out to pasture sigh and rust.

When I was 19, I rode my bike naked in the rain.
Obviously, I was in love.

I always loved the animal husk of night,
the horizon made of a hill, the low cloud
that says, I love you, the dark that isn’t so dark,
each white gas station in each small town
lurching toward rock and weeds.

When I was 31, I threw up while a toddler cried
at the bathroom door. Both of us must have known
another child was coming to change everything.

The track speeds us up. See the first snowflakes,
the first whiff of lilac through the crack
in the window, the cooling touch of night
while passing horses sleep standing up.

When I was 53, I got lost in the mountains
by being too slow to keep up with the others.
I would have to climb a little higher to find them,
my lungs trembling in the lifting elevation,
my legs happy but so tired and able at once.

Out the window, behold the good ground
after another storm where God is
a long, wide puddle reflecting the stars.

.

Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg, Ph.D., the 2009-13 Kansas Poet Laureate is the author of 24 books, including The Magic Eye: A Story of Saving a Life and a Place in the Age of Anxiety, How Time Moves: New & Selected Poems; and Miriam’s Well, a novel.  Founder of Transformative Language Arts, she offers writing workshops, coaching, and collaborative projects. Her poetry has been widely published, including in Terrain, Half and One, Poets & Writers, Negative Capability, Mockingheart Review, Two Rivers, The New Territory, Louisville Review, New Letters, and dozens of other journals.

.

Back