When Imagination Is the Runaway
Renee Soto
Tonight’s 11:58 freight train, boxcar
horizon, is more than a familiar melody
pulling me along into distraction, wheel
on rail, car coupled to car: its full-speed
tornado roar and organ chord are whistling
for my imagination, one more hobo
lured to skip towns, switch trains & tracks:
first-hitch here, Chesapeake & Ohio, next-jump,
north on Richmond, Fredericksburg & Potomac.
Knowledge lurches with midnight’s slow thump:
“You will never dream again. You will always be naked.
You will not stay up anymore
and solve for x if a=truth and b=magic, and a+b=x.”
Wasp bodies and paint flecks lie in the bedroom windowsill—
I don’t look one more time,
just to see. “X” is as definite
as railroad gauge: the measured space between two
parallel iron rails bridged by wooden sleepers.
© 2007 University of North Carolina Greensboro