Were This a Wish with a Plea

in it, or vice versa, or were this a ration, I’d press it,
as one presses substances with the hands, fingers, or arms;
as one is pressed in a crowd. Three times a week
I ride the dawn train; it stops at Carpenter, Queen Lane.
Thus begins my tally of benign activities. It’s not unusual.
Throughout the cosmos, even in France, even in Bohemia,
people wait, tilting, at stations; people chew on their lips,
mildly thirsty, rubbing smudges, recovering rain, a clearing,
a forest, a rooftop, rain. The pastiche doesn’t abate.
While everyone’s looking, I puzzle out my love of secrecy.
It’s a sign of soundness, according to Dr. X—to think one’s way
to feeling—or back to it; according to X, all insatiable,
tinkering people, in all civilizations, from time immemorial,
report the same phase of reverie. But I’m tired
of slicing up my sensations. I would shrink, you said,
in answer to the question about other forms.
I’d be invisible. Were this a wish, I’d throw in some deer.
Things to make lists of. Things I have lost inside my body.