Track (after Tranströmer)
2 p.m.: Sunlight. The subway flows
beneath us. Flecks of darkness
shimmer madly on the wall.
As when a man cracks a window into a dream,
remembering everything, even
what never occurred.
Or after skimming the surface of good health,
all his nights become ash, billowing clouds,
strong and warm, suffocating him.
The subway never stops.
2 o’clock. Filtered sunlight, smoke.
* * *
I’ve been dipping into Friends, You Drank Some Darkness, Robert Bly’s 1975 translations of Harry Martinson, Gunnar Ekelöf and Tomas Tranströmer, and I couldn’t resist playing with one of my favorite poems. A different darkness, a separate space, another landscape…
This first appeared here in April 2015.
O at the Edges 
Tho experience with subways is minimal, I do know about those dream awakenings … And I can easily visualize a subway metaphor. Dreams ever flowing beneath consciousness, there when we are somehow drawn down to their level either asleep or awake. If my dreams ever stop, that’ll mean I’ve stopped.
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Most of my writing emerges from that subterranean level. It takes a while, but…
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