A field cannot be empty, only full
of fieldness. A factory near the tracks
next to a field can be empty. A home
is often empty. Sometimes the train
goes so quickly for so long,
it becomes difficult
to think of ever walking again,
the delicacy of that motion
to which the entire body commits itself.
And sometimes the heart turns
into an engine, surging
at the thought of being elsewhere, elated
that, so solid a muscle,
it persists, even through Trenton,
or seeing some old church in Pennsylvania,
the steeple cardboarded
against the dead-computer sky.
I’ve been in a suburb before, though
it’s so long since I was outside of something,
but not so far away as to be elsewhere.