Chitra Ganesh, How to Assemble a Flying Car (detail), 2018, linocut on tan BFK Rives. Courtesy of the artist & Durham Press.
Night Travel
First lose the light, then the train,
and as the great boxed-in shadow of yourselves takes out whole cornfields,
wordlessly agree to right-crossed journey-legs.
Corn. What’s it to you, now
your shadow snaps in half the flood-lit steeples? Unvisitable towns
wave their plastic welcome mat at your backs.
Arrival is the new horizon.
Near the door—to what?—the young stuff their ears and mouths.
When the little trolley rolls up with drinks you think,
tea, what is it? Still here
in seven settings of the sun? That’s when you’ll end diversion,
use words to decide who mates with who
and who gets the last moth-eaten rind.
Then it’s time to pool your languages, choose one for housekeeping,
one for games,
one to describe the slightest changes in weather.
Sarah Wolfson is the author of the poetry collection A Common Name for Everything (Green Writers Press, 2019). Her poems have appeared in TriQuarterly, AGNI, The Michigan Quarterly Review, The Fiddlehead, PRISM international, and elsewhere. Originally from Vermont, she lives and teaches writing in Montreal. (updated 10/2019)