Carol Pearce-Worthington

Upper Bunk

A foot from the ceiling under an extra blanket a swaying curtain shutting out the moon the farms the fences the windmills the high tension towers the corn and the Texas Eagle speeding us south in room 3 car 3000 the third of November wheels grinding metal and rattling against this grid that tells the behemoth where it must and must not go and oblivious to the mighty engine and its tiny engineer we sleep the sleep of the forgiven because we have forgotten nothing that we can think of and carry everything essential or so we believe because we are not searching our bags or patting our pockets and saying where in the world and what did I do with and it's got to be here somewhere and so dream all the way through Illinois Missouri Arkansas on into Texas until Dallas where we emerge according to what is written on our tickets half a country from where we started only beginning to catch up on months of lost sleep and dragging a wheeled cart with a computer and a duffle of papers a fat book a wall charger a tin of paints across the Texas metro rail tracks in rain and in the small trees before the doorway to the nearly empty waiting room where a black man sleeps with his head flung back as if caught rushing against some unseen timetable in these trees a thrush sings to the afternoon and its long distance rain …

whistling across fields
the boy
your father was