Trainyard

I have to ride my bicycle places to write.
I can fill my brain all I want
with images of boxcars
but I cannot see the boxcars—
I cannot touch their corrugated frames.

I have to take my body to the places
that my mind goes
in order to pluck details from them
like butterflies from the air.

Sitting, still as I am,
I can pick out their black wings
and trace the constellation of white dots
like points on a map.

The butterflies of my memory sound
like the clear sky
and like weathered
wood—they shuffle out the song of how
everything that is outdoors
has touched the real air.

Riding the rails
I zoom past the ramshackles
on my tennis-shoed feet
as much weight in me as a butterfly
as much contained space as a boxcar.

And the yellow light
which sighs through the train yard like a whispering ribbon
unspools across my back
as I mount my bicycle and ride back home,
head full of things to stick
pins through—black
on a blank, white page.