Last night we ate Thai food and drank Aussie wine,
leaving a 50 buck tip 
because we were too drunk to make or accept change.
I said something that upset your friend from college.
I tipped over a tray of dishes at a busboy station,
and once you saw the direction things were headed,
you switched to vodka martinis which disappeared
from their heavy clear glasses.

This morning we pay for all of those prices, 
and look out into the foggy railyard,
waiting for our train.

2
Train people are dirty. They bring their dirty children
in pajamas like they were getting ready for
a twenty four hour station wagon trip.

“Don’t wanna potty,” a little boy says,
mashing his fist into a giant brown stuffed dog
that surely could have been left at grannies.

Train people line up like there will be gold
in the overstuffed and crowded coach cars.
They jostle for the facing seats, where their family
can stare at each other, instead of staring at strangers.

Train people carry giant bags of home food, fearful
that on board, they might have to do without.
They lumber their carryon baggage, and add to it
newspapers, paper bags, games, giant bottles of Big Red.

3
Once rolling, we press faces against the oversized windows
at the back yards of dirty and unkempt towns. 
Moon faced people on a brown porches stare as we go past.
How many trains a day? How many cups of coffee?

We watch the dirty town give way to a wasted landscape
full of service roads, felled and dead trees,
twisted metal of cars, tractors.
A whole, beautiful, blue bumper, like off a Ford Crown Victoria,
rests against a fence somewhere in Georgia.

You read a magazine with Meg Ryan on the cover,
and I think Meg looks like a fighter. I bet she wouldn’t 
give up this easy.

Once rolling, the motion is constant, a rocking.
Not pleasant like Cary Grant movies, but jostling.
And not in a single, circumnavigational path, but
up and back, left twice, then a roll to the right. Then right again,
several hard bumps.

We’re on tracks, right? the fat guy across from us says.
I mean, it’s not like we’re on the fricking highway.

4
When night comes, we settle in the lounge car.
You can smoke here, smoke like there’s no tomorrow.
Smoke like it was 1955 and we’re all living in a Marlboro ad
with dames and gents and that smooth, golden filter.

A woman reads Mario Puzo, but doesn’t appear to flip the pages.
She has a cane and a Virginia Slims.

One guy talks about his heart surgery, how it’s wised him up,
slowed him down, made him gain perspective. He buys 
three of our cigarettes for a dollar. He puts the bill down next to the pack,
and then later swaps it for 4 quarters. 

At 2 am we’re sleeping with some of the other smokers,
feet up on the opposite seat’s arm. 
At some town in North Carolina we make a
sharp stop in front of the tiny station.

We shake our heads to wake, light up a cigarette,
and watch Momma and two crying daughters
get on behind us. 
Momma has a bruised and half-shut left eye.
The one daughter wails into her blanket,
the other, older, nine, stares at us.
“What are you looking at?” she says.

5
Before dawn comes, we get off the train.
When it rumbles off, we are left standing
on the platform in our own dirty town,
and we can still feel the motion beneath our feet.
Still moving. Still rocking. I have smoke in my hair
and through my clothes. 
You scratch your head, grab some of the suitcases,
and start the walk to a waiting cab.
I think about making a joke,
like, next time, let’s fly.

But it’s then I remember. This was the last time.
This was the last chance. This was the time
when we were going to leave all of those things behind.