On the diving platform of the station,
with the viscous Housatonic
struggling home below the bridge,
the swallows gather into clouds,
a hundred thousand heartbeats clicking to the tandem
axles, clicking like the anxious flutter of your
fingers on the bed frame
as I kissed you one last time.
This is a study of oncology, the copper dome
which shivers in the light’s embrace across the
tracks, the arced remembrance of a pink
skywriter, the swollen bells jars of the power lines.
Tomorrow they will cut you as you sleep
and even they don’t know what hides beneath
that stained and clean-shaved tent of skin.
From the window, sitting backwards on an inside seat,
the swallows hold the sunset for a moment more,
a moment as they sew the evening closed against the earth,
sea shroud, and falling through the darkness watch
the train below them glowing,
going with a head against one window,
like the model you once ran around my universe
and across the playroom floor.