Unpocket the boarding pass.

This may happen on a bright November morning

nine minutes before the whistle blows,

a tide of bodies under the archway, channelled between metal barriers,

each voice a white feather blown into a facade

built to withstand a revolution.

At its base a cage, a lady taking money,

the signs above her in an ancient language.

So many ways to panic. No one gets straight answers,

just the beautiful symmetry of a blank face...

* * *

There's nothing to be done.

Passing a station full speed through the morning dark,

you sense something terrible must have happened

if only because you're rushing away from it.

Drop your head back on your pillow,

close your eyes and nurse the motion.

Falling asleep again is always harder than you think.

Perhaps you recognized a figure on the platform,

face tinged the blue-white of snow,

studying each black window as it shuttle by.

With dawn comes a steady sun,

a sadness you can't place,

another name off the list

you swore you'd remember.

* * *

...Two men bustle inside, hats bigger than their heads,

gear pushed ahead of them in well-travelled bags.

Garrulous as drunks on a shortcut.

Vaughan hops over the narrow aisle to side with me,

flying roo-like onto the top bunk

and they keep glaring at us

as if to figure out who to blame for what.

Misha is the one to plunk beer on the table

though at that moment we didn't know his name

nor imagine it could be important to know.

Tomas unwraps the package of fish,

black, oily, each the size of a thumb,

their smell immediate, intoxicating.

He lays them on the backside of a paper bag,

invites us to eat and drink with king-sized gestures

as though playing to the back of the room.

We have nothing to give them

other than our hunger, an idiom or two,

squeezing out introductions between mouthfuls...