There was no night in that night.
The moon soldiered through the smog.
The rails so near your bedside window
you both smelled the cigarettes of engineers
with diesel drafts, steel wheels stammering
the last, brakes-on stage to the port, shaking
the bedframe, swivelling ambulance strobes
across your ceiling.
across your ceiling. He tells you that he used to love
being the one who loves less. Believe him,
leave on the lamp. Let tired trainmen wonder
why it burns so late, in a blue window, crepe
curtains alive there like a negligee drying
in the crude breath of engines arriving from the east.
(They haul sunrise behind them out of the Rockies,
a whole dry summer in their cars.)
Don’t let him doze. Lie to him
that this, and he, are the only best, tonight
in your boxcar of a room, floating
high over the sleepers on their bed of stones,
where you both out-sing the trains.