DECEMBER 12

Stop softly now for us, sunk
deeply into a crawling move
through Ohio and the local
galaxies riding alongside, level
and doubled in a window darkly, my
thin light confounding the many
more

alien ones of the landscape, free
of time in its egregious size,
cast starkly against consistency
of the rail and our paled
movements

with it, turbulent rolling conducive
to sleep and other stupors
embraced fearfully, out of emotion
effected by taut gazes
out
and the taking into yourself this
compromise, with your country,
its lights and sometimes fearsome
others passing you, woke too by you.