The train clatters behind my house
a dozen times a day.
I am so accustomed to it
it might as well be a toy
falling on the floor
in another room.
Thoreau heard the same
from his cabin on the pond.
We do not ride upon the railroad;
it rides upon us, he said.

After the last suicide,
which proved too well his point,
someone said there
had to be something done
about the trains, which go
deep in the woods before the slight crest
as if its path were an allegory
of a danger to the soul.
Apparently, the lost boy
had grazed for many days
the parallel, wild brush
where the train cut through.

One of our children dreams
of movies he will make,
his mind a thick-penned storyboard.
The other hands her point shoes on a nail
in the wall, so the happy dogs won't eat them.
At Crosby's Market, I buy soft bread, eggs, milk,
and in the morning they will arise, taller,
thicker with their mysteries.
Sleepless we lie in the covers, in the cuff of old love,
the last train going by now, as fast as the first.