Poem for Tuesday

FROM THE AMTRAK

It is, perhaps, what you would expect to see

From an Amtrak ratcheting through the Jersey outback

Before a scrap metal yard.

But you will blink once before you are aware

It is cars you are looking at,

Pressed into the beyond,

Into the shape of things to come,

Flat as the sun and stacked like dented cards.

There’s one to the side still whole,

Waiting wheel-less, doom in its parts, for the big hammer,

Looking a bit like the Dodge you drove

The one you cursed, though it carried you there and back.

Can it be grief you feel for this machinery,

Shed like a chrome and metal mold of your heart?

But you are well on your way to another place,

In another state, when it seizes you unaware

That you are always being stripped like gears

And will be

Forever slipped free of your armor like skins,

Of all your machinations,

Loosed one by one of your devises,

Until you leave the free way,

The pistons of your own naked engine driving you home.