Overnight Train

from the stomach of the smoke bulging station
I saw clearly in my mind
how Anna Karenina descended from the train in Moscow
I was pulled into a sensory world
more real than the mild, late winter sun bleached room
of my adolescence

I saw the endless desert of snowfall
between Moscow and St Petersburg
the solitary train track linking these two worlds
the quiet of cold, broken only by the churning train wheels
and the whistle, announcing arrival in small farming towns.

years later, I took the night train
from the place I had seen in my mind
the uninhabitable cold, walking from the golden Moscow subway
to that station.

Less smoke now,
small beds and bunks for the night journey
throughout that desert of ice
It is impossible to sleep
I am on her journey, looking through the window at nothing darkness
the soothing train moving through the cold, alone against the night
I have found the journey, the overnight train of that imagined world.

Deep Forest

the leaves smother me with greenery
a shaking suffocating rhapsody
the refuge of past walks,
where we saw the twinkle of fairies
not even a marked appearance by the sun
no light,
my breathing slows, becomes compromised
something stirs, I stop, confused, caught between then and now
only a bird flies away shaking drops from its wings.