The Northeast clacks by on the dark
of a night train, churning steady
as a mother’s heartbeat
through a womb.
                                    Through
                                            thin layers
of locomotive membrane, past streetlights
dully casting sticky pools on
moistened pavements, their quick voices
too blurry to decipher.
                                          The car
                                                  too rushed
for suburban tones to smuggle in
from the rainy eastern seaboard, I press
my ear against the wall. Then my palms. Then
my anxious, ready for a birth
                                               but stay
                                                       cloistered on
past Massachusetts, through Rhodes Island, deep
into the belly of Connecticut, before
spooling damply new
onto your earth.

For Natalie Easton

Published at Menacing Hedge