West Of Rome / new poems 2011

Of Weeds And Rails

Far off train from my childhood carry me back home
to parallel memories of place and possibility,
of destinations still as yet dreamed of,
but somehow sensed well before
they tore up the tracks
all in the name of a
nameless progress
no one remembers now,
lost to wild mint, to mallow,
to common ribwort and chicory,
to tiny yellow blooms of groundsel,
to pricking thistles, the tumble of weeds
azoic along remnants of rusted rails I still walk.