Amsterdam Poems: En Route
Leaving on a Journey Early
The grey morning does not
have eyes. Clouds stare blindly.
I am invisible until the sun sees me.
Along the long path toward
the train station, trees still wear
their chiffon nightgowns.
The eyes of puddles close
as I pass. Weed plume lashes shiver
in the slight breath of the wind.
Dandelions poke up their ruffled
fur heads. A bullfrog dozes
on a stone dam. Water rushes.
You can hear the way silence
dresses in sound and the way
sounds dress up silence
A heron stands at the edge
of a creek on one leg, immobile,
waiting for fish. At the edge
of impossibility, anything
is possible. Like Jesus, the first
morning light walks on water.
Once I Saw a Pair of Swans
from a train window.
They built a nest from trash
along a canal in Amsterdam
on a plank ledge.
Their wings were dirty white.
They sat on milk jugs,
grocery bags, discarded blue flipflops.
As they shifted in and out of sight,
I heard the cathedral bells toll
and felt the thigh
of a stranger pressed up
warm against mine. The faint
reflection of my face rose
beside me in glass like a moon.
On the Way Back to Amsterdam
not far from Liège, the frost spreads
on bushes and trees like bridal
veils, sunlight glistening
in icicle-bejeweled trees.
Every part of the world
seems an altar, and I do not
know how to pray.
I withdraw on the red leather seat
of my graffiti-inscribed
sanctuary of a compartment
and refuse the haloed moon-
white peppermints
that two ladies with plastic rain caps
fastened to their hats offer
me from their leathery hands.
