Operation — A Poem by J.G. Sandom

 

On the diving platform of the station,

with the viscous Housatonic

struggling home below the bridge,

the swallows gather into clouds,

a hundred thousand heartbeats clicking to the tandem

axles, clicking like the anxious flutter of your

fingers on the bed frame

as I kissed you one last time.

 

This is a study of oncology, the copper dome

which shivers in the light's embrace across the

tracks, the acred remembrance of a pink

skywriter, the swollen bells jars of the power lines.

Tomorrow they will cut you as you sleep

and even they don't know what hides beneath

that stained and clean-shaved tent of skin.

 

From the window, sitting backwards on an inside seat,

the swallows hold the sunset for a moment more,

a moment as they sew the evening closed against the earth,

sea shroud, and falling through the darkness watch

the train below them glowing,

going with a head against one window,

like the model you once ran around my universe

and across the playroom floor.

 

1984 ~ Bridgeport, Connecticut