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This Train

By Carl PhillipsPosted Wednesday, May 12, 1999, at 3:30 AM ET

From car to car, a release, as of dangerously
held breath--The brakes, you say--we

begin again.
Again the glass, in its steady

abrupting of one vision for another one as
swiftly, as relentlessly abrupted, reminds

what I keep forgetting to understand--how
many things of this world exist merely

to be

got past:
the skinned landscape; across it, all

the hooved lives reduced to the one shuffle
in hard country;

the occasional hawk, but
none flying--

each seemingly more affixed
to than settled on this sidelined plow, that

fence-less fencepost ... Here was a farm or

Here a field

--until what?

Against boredom,
restive, we play games like Name This Train.

I choose Wanton Disregard; you choose, as
always, Train of God--

you say, Everything
is God's. The news, for easy enough miles,

is good; you will never know me; it won't be
yours to fill, ever--this sweet, failed life.

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Carl Phillips is the author of seven books of poetry, most recently The Rest of Love. His new collection, Riding Westward, will be published next spring.
To visit Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky's Favorite Poem Project site, click here.
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