a day in New England

Connecticut releases us.

After an odd day in its snowy flats of suburban space and urban squares, we fly home aboard a train whose name is a portmanteau.

Happy, we are exhausted artists with unborn plans but time enough to hope…

The sky loses its grip and turns pink.

Earlier, at the station, the blue was too flat, too perfect, to be real.

It gave away the stones of the old building we stood outside while waiting for the train.

Which eventually hefted its perfect weight into the station. Grinding its insides.

True trains (not subways) are sad. We agree.

But we’re not sad. I don’t think…

We talk awhile, friends making plans in the dusk on the train, then fall to our own books and other puzzles.

Bridges pass, highways, tenements, abandoned basketball courts, fenced-off tennis courts.

Golden domes in the dying light, pink then purple of the almost-over day spent away from what we do most days.

Tagged retaining walls retaining only dirt. Dirty houses, precious houses high on hills of grass.

Rivers, bodies of frozen or snowed-upon water. Plastic bags floating in trees. Yachts nestled in docks.

We’re going back to a place we choose to live in.

For a moment, the lights in our car go out, and the boats become mounds of snow on the black water.