On the Train
by Henry Walters

Beginning to slow down for a station, we lumber past a field squared off at its perimeter by woods. Boulder-sized bales stand at odd intervals. In each furrow is standing water, iced over. The eye slips into each furrow as it passes, sighting down along its unbroken, tapering length, then leaping to the next in the space of a split-second. It is like the act of running one’s thumb down the teeth of a comb. The hidden dimension of lines that lead straight back to the binding edge shows itself myriad times, but always too quickly. At this speed, the field is blurry revelation, rending, then restoring its veil, before one sees what the eyes see, before the memory has time.

Slowing down, we pass a field hemmed in
By woods. The Indian who looks for signs
Of changes from known nature (broken twigs,
Worn bark, bent grasses) recognizes man
In the clean swath, the ragged tips of stubble,
Squared ends and straight, scored lines. Circular bales
Like toppled column drums are spaced around,
Wrapped in white tarp against the winter mold.
(There was a short-lived thaw a month ago.)
He thinks the sun has swirled its finger through
Last autumn, and left these spools; that wind
Has rolled its blankets up; its tracks,
Those furrows grooved and iced into the ground.
One at a time, they open and they close.

       The whorl of your fingerprint,
Of your finger spooling in your hair,
Is reproduced precisely there
       By hay-bales in a winter
             Field.

       Pine-woods at its edge
Have bound and squared away
Fifteen acres of ruled clay.
       Could I stop, I would be watching
              You.

       The frost has set the furrows
Straight. Like the pages of a book
Under your thumb’s cursory look,
       They open and they close
              Too fast.

Sing It Again

High up on a garden wall, overlooking the street,
A student mines his repertoire
For chucks and chirrups, the rattle, the whirr, the screech,
The throttle of the telephone’s rolled r,
The sharp nick-nick of pigeon beaks against
The pavement stones, the infant sirens wailing.
The tongue leans on the teeth. The cigarette’s
Crushed out beneath the heel. The light is failing.
There’s not a sound he hasn’t learned, he thinks,
No scratch of windy branch, no suck of sap,
No sudden caw, no bell, no muttered thanks
When sixteen cents clink dully in the cup
Of a man who asked it. In the oak
Of the mockingbird there rang the hawk’s high shriek.

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