Most nights the train wails through the countryside,
a lidless cyclops banshee, sightless levin searchlight, and so sonorous the bridge's paint curdles
Grain streams out of cars and clatters among the tracks
Might your midnight snack have jolted free your soul and ferried you through the moonlight?

Morning announces a sunless sky, for you
eyes tenderly shrouded in a heather gauze
She whispers foul incantations across sludge and waterless brambles
- a lullaby to rustle and carry feathers from flightless wings,
to entangle them in the earth's course, tawny hair,
adorned and glittering with glass slivers and hollow bones