With Trains

Written by: Adrienne Yeardye

 

this is the thing

with trains:

 

they stay up all night

and then sleep in parking lots

their bones rolling and creaking

in their concrete beds

 

they wait for the sound of darkness

to thunder in on the air

and drown itself in the lake

 

then they plot histories 

in sprayed schematics

and with free people

 

when he was 14

William Joseph

boarded a freight train in Sudbury

 

from no fixed address

he conjured the moss found in mountains

the stars over the oceans

and sweetgrass in the palm

of my hand