It’s new year’s day

2015

(the year I turn

40.

Good

God).

I’m on the train–

One of my

Favorite places to be.

The City of New Orleans,

20 hours between

New Orleans and

Chicago.

Gazing out this train window is

My kind of entertainment:

Scenery flowing steadily by,

The deep, damp greens and

Browns of

The south in winter.

The gray-day

Forests and fields and

Poor, small, rickety towns.

Looking out the train window

In the daylight,

It’s expansive thinking,

Thinking that quests over the

Landscapes and

Around these small-town buildings and

Between the scrub brushes like

Rippling water.

Who are the people

In those houses?

What are the stories of those

Old buildings?

Who’s poled along these bayous and

Tramped in these forests?

And I love the

Rock of the train.

To just lay on this

Sleeper car bed and

Let this almost-40-year-old body

Be rolled

Back and

Forth,

To settle and

Settle

Deeper into my oldening skin and bones

With every gentle

Tug of the tracks,

This Buddha-grinning head

Lolling on the pillow,

These yoga feet

Flexing in the luxury of having

The whole bottom double berth

To myself.

To think that

Americans disdain

Riding the train!

We,

Who think of ourselves as

Expanders and

Ramblers!

There’s nothing more

Large and

Outward-glowing than a

Day-lit view out a

Train window.

And then,

The transition to night:

It’s that dark, snowless,

Southern winter kind of night

When you blink at your phone,

Amazed it’s only

8:15.

Now the window is a

Black

Mirror

Flecked by passing lights outside.

Now it’s you and

Your reflection in the glass,

Your almost-40-year-old

Arms

Moving your stuff around the

Blue-lit cabin.

You and the reflection of the

Top of your head

Lit by the reading lamp,

Doming like a perfect

Half-moon,

Like it holds a

Momentary miracle.

I’ve ridden trains for years.

How many times have I

Encountered the

Black train-window mirror,

Reflections of the back-lit

Shadowy hints of

Myself at

14 years old,

21 years old,

23,

27,

European trains in my

Twenties and thirties.

A lot of

Confusion and grasping,

Tears and

Unsteady cockiness in those

Old black-glass mirrors.

Today in the black-glass mirror,

I feel like a

Stretching cat,

Self-satisfied to

Loll here on vacation after

Working

So

Hard,

To have a strong-jawed husband in the

Berth above me,

A cantaloupe-bellied toddler

Sleeping in the pack-n-play,

Three other children

Growing in their sleep in the

Cabin next door.

(These children don’t

Save you from yourself but

Slowly,

If you keep enough of

Yourself to

Yourself,

They teach you

Many lessons.

And they are so funny.

We

Laugh and laugh.)

Today the

Black-glass mirror isn’t about

Angst and

Confusion.

Today it’s about a

Wink into the

Black night

And a curiosity for

What will be revealed

When the

Morning light turns this

Glass from a

Mirror back into a

Window on this

Mad, lovely

World.