Locking Up

Those endless freight trains
that sometimes take fifteen
minutes to pass the crossing
always come through this side of
town late at night.
I used to think
that they were filled with the spoils
of some coal-mining town
from the North,
until I saw the chain of cars
in broad daylight, saw the
sunlight glittering against bent
steel girders and glass.
Blocks away,
it barely has the strength
of a child whistling away
the time on the midday swings,
but even through my classroom
door, slamming through desk
drawers, I can hear its
lazy tune.

The scratched silver surface
of the stressed keyring
tries to bury itself in
teacher's papers
and letters
and gradebooks,
waving me off as if
saying I'm not in as much
of a hurry as I pretend to be.
I press its finger through
the lock, so that the
tip of its nail touches
T.S Eliot's love song,
embedded deep in the wood,
admonishing all that pass it
that love will take them
to the deepest parts of the ocean
and distract them enough
to make them ignore the water
filling their lungs like balloons.

We debated the poem's message,
circling around it like vultures, the same day
my teacher told us,
in a knowing, half-serious tone,
that we do everything
just to feel the diffusion
of warmth from our body to another's,
to feel the friction of hip bones
and get out of bed the next morning
to dress in our parents' clothes,
but the act itself
represents some deep
psychological need to dominate,
to submit, to resolve our feelings
for our mothers and sisters,
and the girl next door
who always had higher standards
than that.

Twisting the key,
the train carries its
one-note tune as
white-hot pinpricks burn
weak holes through
the thick carpet of midnight.
No sky will melt as easily
as the thin New England
sheet of ice that hangs
above the college towns
and mountains of coniferous forests.
The train wanders towards
the river to whistle
to the coal-black water,
to skip stones and watch
the freshwater fireflies
light the ripples.
Winding around the locked hallways,
I slip away from the
cacophonous laughter of
the front parking lot,
following the street lamps to my car
like a military plane
tracing the luminous wake
of its aimless carrier.