The door swings from cold to cold: the institutional
lobby, like a train station, where we meet: a Dickensian
tableau of collateral damage,
except for me, but, I say, “Next week I’ll look
like you,” to the woman with the hairless baby-look,
blue knit cap loosely pulled, past embarrassment.
She’s depressed, in her second round, says her husband,
after being cured for two years. I examine my life
to see what part of it is made of this: I want to fit in.
One cause after the other: train tracks.
We were in Chicago, my sister and I, age nine and twelve, sent
alone (no parent would do that now) to the lake,
by train. The hollow bathroom, the scrub lady,
the old man. I made my sister sit on the bench, not stir.
I meanwhile remained alert, my spine learning control.
The man who came in with me has multiple myeloma.
His pale preoccupation with the body’s
failing. What is this love of living that turns to each
failing part, in wonder, in curiosity, as if
it were alien? The conductor waves the train on, after
a brief stop. This time we are on it.
The woman cannot walk without help. It’s the neuropathy.
To reach for meaning is to miss everything.
To reach is to miss everything.
Monet made the train bear down through the snow
with persistent hooded headlights and roiling
black smoke. He made the man alongside walk
the opposite direction. Neither has much to do with
the other, yet each appears to be the other’s
consequence. The wooden fence and the young trees
are the spine of that dark beauty, holding each other up
by repetition until the end, which is not in the painting.