overnight

Overnight Train
_______________

The `Night Bird': a train
hurtling through the darkened alps
stars defining hulks of hillsides,
romantic-moonlit cameos

flowing back along
the line. In the dim orange
corridor, lulled by the noise
of constant wheels into words

with a foreign traveller,
a station suddenly splashed us with light
making us blink and grin. Your shadow
lenthened and turned, then stopped

halted and baffled
by my heart's customs point.
Then smiling at the faceless men
with guns, and worse, their papers,

who guard my paranoid frontier
you soared overhead, encircling me
in the wings of the silent, shadowless bird
that flies the liquid night.

Having found the forgotten
tunnels into my affections,
we shared a paper cup of wine
toasts to the dark touch.

Falling in love once more
you know the pointless sidings, the high
fares, and travel's wear and tear
yet fall for it all again.

With unsaid trust you showed me
it doesn't matter that we cannot
know when we'll arrive, or where.
For we are the restless ones

flying as dissident birds
across an unknowing, sleeping world
as close and straight as parallel tracks
gleaming into the sunrise.