Night Train

I remember waking to a comatose leg,
numbed by the sudden onslaught of
cold mountain draft,
Swiss alp snowy dawn,
my eyes nearly crusted shut by
the crackling stiff train air,
tight enough for breath to get
Caught in.
I was confused by the frigid ozone --
after all, when I had drifted to sleep
in the train car (rattling like old bones)
on our overnight journey from Czech land
through Switzerland to
Tuscany,
it had been stifling sticky unbearably hot,
air thick enough to slice with a
blunt butter knife in summer...
And now, shivering,
I have to stumble over my sleeping roommate
to rummage for my jacket in the
Dark.
Still numb, back in my seat nest,
I dare to slowly peel
the window shade up, inch by slight
Inch,
Unbearably curious as to what
lies beyond the icy window border
in that ghostly foreign Abyss.
Winding and rumbling through the rolling mounds of
Trees
and thin suspended bridges
Above sparkling ethereal towns
painted into the wooded peak crevices,
I remember thinking
This can't possibly be real
I've woken up in an ISpy book
And the night train just howled and
Clattered,
Like an old metal teapot
tossed upon a campsite fire to
Burn and steam and smoke until
sparking its own demise.


And every October
since that glittering train reckoning,
that late night early morning awakening,
Each October
This memory creeps up to me as
I lie sleeping in my sloppy unconscious
Golden tower of disarray --
Surveying the wreckage of summer
(messy nymphet of
scattered light and
fallen leaves)
This memory jabs itself into my
Broken skin,
Injecting me with wild pyre
Get up, it says
Wake up
and open those wide eyes
Remember how alive you were,
that night?

When everything appears unreal and the
movement of time is
too mercurial
even for a Gemini,
Breathe it all in
Doesn't matter if you keep up or
Slow down
Just clutch the beauty
to your heaving chest
And run with it as fast
as your heart can hold out,
Until your skin peels off,
leaving nothing but a rattling skeleton
Night train of bones,
rumbling into the darkness
climbing through the mountains
surrounding the miniature sparkling
ISpy towns
Covered in a glistening blanket of
surreal Swiss snow.

Life is too short, too fleeting
to miss one second
from behind sleeping eyes,
It's all a waking dream,
anyway
And these memories are what keep us
Breathing
(along the neck of October).