Train to NYC

Some back lots speak of empty afternoons,
the dark of dawn, and countless nights
scored by winter’s claws
and ravaged by idiot summer.
To live the desolation of those spaces is,
thank God, impossible;
the train keeps passing on to the next
and next,
and gone is each arena
where the barbarous hours murder.
All you can bear away is your own endurance.
Let those alien places stay
behind to bear their own.

September 23 2023