Express

All I remembered clearly was the afternoon express,
the steam in a clean fireplace, and the clock
above the mantle, ticking like a star.

I.

Sometimes we tell ourselves
stories about how things ought to be,
the stuff of dreams and longing,
haunting works of art or poetry,
a starless desert of the heart at 3:00 am.

And so we fill the joyless void
with whiskey or astronomy,
or strange lovers we found somewhere
on our journey, yet the storyteller in us
knows the truth, whispering her parables
in dreams. We can refuse to wake
and listen, still sometimes something
in us knows where we belong and the express
stops right at our doorstep.

II.

The dream went away three nights ago
but I woke to a rusted lampshade,
swinging above my berth—

the bed turned away,
a turnstile creaks near my window
and I rise. The express is due.

The track whistles under the wind,
delivers dusk in Oklahoma
like a train. The earth turns away.
I remember Grandmother's voice
reading from Exodus and the Psalms,
images of bones and blood–
swept through an open window,
a chinook wind blasting
out of Hell's Half Acre.
An Indian child swings
a rattlesnake skin
like a whip. Crying to the wind,

I am Cochise. I am Geronimo!
A great shaman to raise the dead
heroes. On the horizon the dust

drifts upward, rolling like a wave towards me.
The whistle goes, stunning my senses,
whooping down the wind.

The telegraph is down
in the foreground,
waiting for Indian attack.

A brave hurls his prayer stick
to the moon. Tobacco in his pouch
smells like honey in the October air.

I board with only a cigarette.

III.

The six o'clock from Long Arm
to Tulsa falls through a desert storm.
Lightning fuses arrowhead to steel,
element to element, earth to air–
the night and its passengers tossed about
by an Oklahoma hurricane of dust and fire.

Conversation in a movement of pistons,
the crew has a meal

and one more stop
before they find girls
in steady bedrooms.
Outside of Kiowa,
they found a tomahawk
buried in the axle. The conductor
spit tobacco on the hand
of a wooden Indian.

A half hour out of Tulsa:

The moon explodes
above the watch fires. I listen
for an ambush party.

In the west a star falls
to pieces for an encore.