J. P. White

In the beginning we could hear their swords cutting jewels From the protected orchard while our children heard fine teeth Dragging along empty granary floors. Between us and them Stands the great wound, swallowing all tears, all voices. Transfixed or transformed by this pain? We never know because Who can slip through the gate without throwing a shadow Toward both the past and present? Fire, flood, famine— All we've wished upon them a thousand times, still they inch Back and taunt us with their persistence. We track them down To a quick end. More come. And the old memories grow new. The future seems already written with a pen of iron. The book Unreadable, immense. The enemy has become our masterpiece.

Some men who are at least fifty-five wake up in the night to touch their sex like patting the family dog on the head. Others rise to pace the square of   their den as if  called to guard duty. Still others peer back at me from their bedroom windows as if  on lookout for some lost shipment to arrive from Bitterroot, Montana. I uncurl in bed listening for the 3 AM train to whip through Wayzata, hugging the lake so close I imagine it could skip the hot rails and skid across the ancestral ice toward me, an ice train come to ferry me home or away from my encircling command or back to some earlier time when I too was more fiercely racing the night, my body clamorous thumping, the windows rattling, the length of me moon-drenched, snow falling, sparks raking my wheels, one more town flown through.