Traveling Sketches on a Train This was the best way this way beyond cities and any possible corners of meeting, this system of straightforward lines simply connecting A and B, then B and C, now to next, name to name, pencil marks on a list of stations. This is what I needed. I’ve surrendered navigation of the coming days, knowing nothing but the sound of each destination in the conductor’s mouth. I cannot care for the how of getting there. By air I would arrive too quickly to walk on solid ground. I need to move forward by another volition. The rails are like a river, deepset, meandering, out of time, out of place, yet natural to the landscape. I search for myself among the coupled cars. 1. I stagger down the middle of the train car like a drunk barely able to navigate against the random motion beneath my feet. My hands move from headrest to headrest, the clown dance of an unskilled skier. I must concentrate just to keep my balance. Yes, balance becomes the worthy goal for a mind lost in the greater imbalance of loneliness. Bodies are strewn across crowded seats, curled up in waiting. A little girl holds a doll to the window, showing it the mountain peaks, spinning myths like a travel guide. I feel like the doll in arms, button-eyed, smiling from habit, refusing to blink, unable to respond in a human way. Others sprawl, not noticing, as I pass. Toddlers with straight little backs that know no weight or worry. The luxurious moistness of infants napping. The smooth bodies of teens, taut serpents coiling around their belongings. The relaxed shoulders of sleeping elders, poised as if sleep were an art. So many books opened, eyes transfixed, minds caught in stories far beyond the window's view. Everyone on a journey. How often do we realize this, acting, instead, as if we have arrived, when all along we are merely on the way? Somehow, this makes uncertainty easier to bear. 2. There are no businessmen, as on a plane, busied and self-contained. Not in this slow motion dreaming machine from a distant century when thoughts and wonder had time to place themselves like a child's tug, like a child's "why?" between moments of less rich commerce. Only travelers. Patient and quiet and a little grimy. Iconoclasts in this age of instant and well laundered money. 3. A mother sits stony-eyed face and expression no longer one flesh as pale as a wedding veil not as smooth as it once was like the laced white dress left on the floor beside the celebration bed. She sits like a cushion propped and forgetful as her child rides her exploring each button like a precious toy each crease and fold like a wrinkle of magic each soft white place a destination for his touch. Mother and child, passing time in opposite directions. 4. An old man dozes, rooster head flopping back and forth as if at sea, jaw slack and prickly like a corpse tucked away in a box of floating pine. What dreams prance out of that rough wooden ark now grounded again for a moment in the peace of private pretending? What happy menagerie of once and future life steps down the ramp onto the soft new earth? We are never old in our dreams even when sitting stiff-kneed peering out of swiftly racing windows onto the destinations of other lives, the flooded plains of promised lands. Even when we know this storm is no ordinary springtide. We are never old. 5. Twisting her rings on twisted hands each memory lines up again like flagstones along the walk. Her fingers touch the worn edges as her husband once did, an accountant tapping the keys, calculating into the wee hours. She invokes the familiar motion to see if the sum equals the same again and nods, wishing nothing lost. 6. Another with a birthmark on her face identical to the one I hide beneath my shirt safe from view. But she wears hers for all to see, the inversion of a mask, heart’s blood upon the skin, and it wrinkles into laughter as her smile draws out the full length of her mouth. A poet face. I find my berth and stow my bags, taking out my pen and paper, finally ready to bare my face at least on the page. 7. Out the window long stretches of green and more green and more. Then a cluster of homes, a junkyard, parked cars, a baseball diamond. And more green, stretching. How huddled together we are. Tiny knots and knots within knots. While in its center, tied and distracted as we are, so wrapped in maps and plans and turns of the rope, the world around plays out in our palms like magician’s coins, the same face on each side. But from here, from this place of never stopping, this insular train car on its singular track, from this vagabond and rootless tribe, I see only clusters, neat and safe and quieted, with one filament of wire connecting town to town strung up on crosses of wood marking the way. And I think how this magnetism of humanity pulls. And how this speed of travel pushes. 8. We’ve stopped on a bridge in the middle of nowhere (from some certain perspective) without explanation or warning. An unknown river of pink and peach (known well enough by the egrets) swirls into the blue beneath, and as I watch from my silver perch night pulls out from the distance mountains a tidal darkness I know too well. The engine of the world winds down. We sit too long for some, as worried heads begin to speak of mechanical failures in tones of abandonment. I watch like one removed, like the egret. Here, the stillness touches me. I am not running now. The train, the earth, the sky I am not running. As if the eye of my life sees out from that place which refuses to move. Wings unfolding in a crowded chest. All engines down, a forgotten silence the only element in the stuffy air. And I, listening. A jerk and thump and sudden discharge from the overhead cooling fans sets the passengers to reset their pillows and blankets. We move again. I imagine that, for a moment, the conductor could not go on, stopped by the beauty of this place. 9. It has been a long journey. But time heals nothing, it only helps us forget. Enables us to feel less. To feel things through the filter of rationalizations. Through the filter of poor memory. If I could only sleep, perhaps the act of waking would cleanse me somehow. 10. I love it when the train turns sharply enough so that the engine and all the long silver array of cars can be seen from my sun-scarred window. I know for a moment what I am connected to, the machine that pulls and houses me, the track that has chosen my way. The context of my escape, my surrender. 11. I feel I am on a wave-track, rafting down the Columbia River Gorge. The train glides along nearly at water level, carved walls of the canyons revealing themselves like the weathered torsos of saints. Saints with no eyes or mouths, only faith great enough to move me one to the next keeping me afloat like a boat christened by the wine of exhaustion ready to sail into a face-filled world awash in too many eyes and mouths. And what runs past my ears is not prayer or longing; rather, simple silly play. "Yessir. Yessir. But you gotta know the territory." The absurdity of my mind, laughing and earnest, breaks the seal. And the rhythm of the train transforms into the breathing of a mother. I feel like I want to find my legs again. 12. Reaching the coast, I leave the train behind, choosing to walk the remaining miles to the ocean, thinking this is needed to somehow complete my journey. There is relief and energy in the physical effort, the steady pace, the purposeful striding. The sound of the surf, nearing, is so much more elegant and alive than the train's randomness, as if there is some innate, transcendent form within the rhythms. As if I don't even need to listen in order to hear. Close to water's edge the firm ground gives way to sand, making each step an increasing effort. Then I am at the end, toes to the shoreline, no more room for running. I let the freezing tongue of the sea wet my shoes as the tide rises toward me. I wait until my feet are numb before sliding to my knees, realizing how lost to you, how lost to myself, I have fallen. Feeling nothing but the end. The ocean of end. A memory, still bright as clouds, forms in white: I kneel before you, I playing the sea and you the land. And all I want is to bathe you in pleasure. What a joy these gifts are, given back in waves. Then you become the ocean and break me on my own ragged shoreline, your mouth covering me soft as foam, your tidal gasps pulling at my marrow. I am no longer a shoreline holding these holy motions, but lost to the surf, rising, falling. Each wave high and higher against the rocks, louder in my ears, and I am caught in the undertow, too full of breath to breathe. Spent, no more salt to give, I stop my tears and turn, facing myself. The beach is beautiful of its own accord, no metaphors or memories needed, only itself. The sand is framed by dark brown cliffs, resembling the ribs of a whale. Gnarled trees bent by the permanent wind fringe the top. I find my way to the path and shake off the sand, letting the sun dry my limp clothing. 13. The shell of my soul carries you inside like the call of the ocean, constant and unwearied. You are a part of me. You cannot be removed. I realize now I do not want to. It is time to stop trying. It is time to do more than move from A to B. It is time simply to grow again, even in this permanent wind. A distant train whistle extends the sound of shell and surf. And I. Yes, the journey. There are no destinations, only travels between.