I imagined her.
I imagined that she was with me as
I sat in the observation car of the Amtrak Adirondack 69 travelling from New
York City to Montreal and saw from the corner of my eye as a bearded man let
his wife/girlfriend lean her arm casually against him. Now he puts his arm
around her white, freckled shoulder and she leans against his yellow summer
shirt, and I imagined holding your hand self-consciously; it shall have to be
self-conscious, unfortunately: I have been indoctrinated by the twin, disparate
influences of pseudo-modern Indian social consciousness and Paul McCartney’s
more self-effacing songs (as if His Lordship ever had to hide his love away).
On either side of the train
stretches lake – the Great Lakes of our childhood American history books. The
August wind wrinkles the membrane of the Lake, upon which graze weekend fishing
boats and bits and pieces of driftwood from the trees that rim the lake like
emerald mascara – remnants of a long-forgotten storm or hurricane.
Wrinkles. I wonder what it would be
like to grow old with you. I catch the thought.
This is what I want to do. Ride
with you in the train from New York City to Montreal and sit in the observation
car and drink tiny cups of coffee and see the light rain leave skid marks on
the rounded forward-swept windows and watch the bald eagles take off from the
makeup trees in sweeping bursts of American symbolism and wave to old gentlemen
who watch the train go by from their weekend boats, wearing sunglasses and
meaningful paunches.
By the time we gain the legitimacy
to travel together, alone, in offhand places, our lives shall be spoken-for and
given names to and our relationships shall have a destination, coherent points
of departure and arrival, a direction. Now when we can meander like elven
spirits among the woods of the Great Lakes of North America and the untamed
spaces between us and be true to our wanderlust that swells like a balloon
under our solar plexus insisting on consummation, we are separated by Time and
Distance and Overreaching Ambition. Never enough time to take each other’s
touch for granted. Every second fought for and accounted for and saved up like
pressed flowers in the too-rapidly-flipping blank pages of our mind’s
scrapbook, while Desire slowly fades under the over-bright sun and we live out
old vows for the sake of old memories.
And all this time the train chugs
up the East Coast of North America and all the natural beauty – the soaring
birds, the lakes and beautiful puddles and the lovely and dark and deep woods
and the yellow autumn flowers and the yellow t-shirts and the freckles – is
being left behind.
…
The overcast sky drips through
holes in its fabric.
