The Peculiar Gnosis of Trains

after Walker Percy

By which one knows where one is

at all times

by virtue of being

in motion.

See the world. See Jane run.

Portable familiarity.

His beard an ecosystem,

or the same damn green train case,

smelling of old face, packed again every move,

so I am not one to judge.

What is that wellness in the air when emerging from a tunnel?

Was it there all along? How right.

How good & new.

I am crossing Broad

an all-new cellular entity

than 7 years ago.

That is a Broad statement,

for there is some synapse that recalls

a theory of regeneration.

The not-done thing’s so popular;

everyone loves it.

It has a lot of potential.

There’s a restaurant called Mixto

down the street not yet open:

Mixto smells only of sawdust

& is the most flammable thing on the block.

Everyone wants in.

3:30 is the dead of night in Philadelphia—

2:30 has the bar-closing traffic,

at 4 birds awaken & first-shifters.

3:30, you have nothing at all.

GIGO = garbage in, garbage out.

But the get-go is where you’re coming from. That is,

what is had, the jump,

as beginnings leap & I prefer to think this is the draw

when a crowd gathers below a ledge.

Not so much the teeth as

the alligator’s immensity of tongue that awes.

—Elizabeth Scanlon

Elizabeth Scanlon is the associate editor of The American Poetry Review.

Originally published in the April/May 2004 issue of Boston Review.