I -
Thunder Struck the Abandoned R.R. Station
child-cruciform, ivory, albino in the moon laid beside lit as though still
breathing.
X's on broken wood signs which swang lit up at fork lightning.
Kids crouched under tracks where tracks crossed a ravine.
Lightning zigzagged again, jigsaw, a boy's drawing.
Sun burned red as a beet, a Bessemer
the kind you drawn in kindergarten
but Doomsday was reflected in broken banks of windowpanes
of the stopped trains.
II -
Burn the Map Like the Fields of Cane Bright Sugar Flaming:
it won't show the way.
Put the magnifier glass away.
Slide it back into the table with other unsaid things.
Aunt Jesse's
hat pins, silver thimbles, the chipped China handle of a cup.
Life has swallowed us up.
Dregs drunk, look out cruciform window
airport which warns "Bewarelow-lying planes."
Worn wares, we gaze upon radar dish tilting, metallic blue being.
What if the plane-spotter's taking a break like when the plane from Ukraine
went down
load after load of frozen people came down.
Grass, flowers, land would be burned first, then burial.
Wheat might grow-over graves.
Cooper bloom.
But we couldn't' report it to headquarters.
We must work to shine, put another rod in the backbone.
III -
The Whole Night
the king's noise, the full body of sound lies in me.
Deep enough to drown consciousness in sleep. But I can't
so I rise:
ghost like silk cars, like flying saucers, are treading around
losing balance
touching rims of my room like burning iron
I feel an eerie half-forgotten toy left behind: Reality, all about me, that
Russian Ruin.
