WEDDING SONG

The train was in the station
and an old woman, pale skin and pink dress, white clubbed flowers

drinking ice tea and gin

and earlier another train in the same place
a girl with pig tails eating alphabet soup

and yesterday the same train with a different old woman

split-steel hair dyed to rust, crackers and a crossword,
puzzled.  Do I take your hand

not just because it is your hand

but because it is every hand?
As the pigeons store our weight in silver ink wells

and the steel rafters who among us

really knows, touches, tastes, grasps
before we rail and leaf forward, before we feel and fail, unreal,

real and unrail, flailing for words, and back

to the station.  It’s a man now.  And almost dark. 
Brimmed hat and payos.  We are here to meld, to graft, to graph

impossibilities--

an Hasidic Jew cubed in backlit dusk
eating a doughnut

and reading Jonah.  Do you agree? 

This one bolt shall be
the entire metropolis, the rattling metal of ten thousand feet

the clamor of the calcifying dream

and the quiet window.  Sit beside me. 
I want to watch the immaculate tv

that plays inside you.  The boys, knee-deep in indigo

and almond twilight, dragging in their nets. 
The window of that dining car sits empty now.

I will bring you grapefruit in the morning.