A VIEW OF THE STUDIO

My train that early evening
ran toward its tunnel,
a gray nothing, I thought,
waiting beyond. Daylight
shed its scales, hamlets of lights
pumped from hillsides, trackside
T.V. emanations streaked past,
aluminum greens and blues
in motion or somehow stilled,
instant to instant, identically
sized, the world plying form
on form, revising itself
as I watched. Practice makes
imperfect. Headlights dissolved
inside rockface, vineyards
troweled my window, then meadows,
run-off acidic pouchings,
and marbled wind raking
clouds into sea-motion
minerals, veils dragged
past my view until
the landscape sheared off
into combed cobalt blues
channeled into the mountain,
where graffiti fragments knifed
like blue ice and deranged
the scene. We make meaning
of accident. The windows
held our faces close
to shadow grids masked
by rent disclosures,
this fresh infinitude
of line and volume.
When we emerged, the small
village station lay
among its dark mountains
in a casual perfection
of night snow scooped by wind.
The more it covered tracks,
switching lights, platform, roofs,
the more it revealed red
umbrellas, violet coats,
porters’ wagons and clock,
a slight place sedated
in its changes, and I
felt delivered, unfinished,
to bright and solid scenes
melting through me as I
streamed helpless into them.