Train Stop

The train stops.
I’m trying to remember the name of a woman
at a train stop like this, years ago,
who said she was possessed by demons
she called Enslaved Selves.
Gave them names
like Toxic Tamlina, Malignant Majesta.
But wasn’t her real name Karen—
or was it Kama or Karla?
I gaze out the window
at the city’s lunch counter lights,
wondering why
it feels like I’ve been here
in some subzero past stuck in time.
Nickname and all.
At a railroad crossing,
run-down place, one with nothing coming—
either way. Two tow trucks
stuck in mud.
Green light stuck on green.
Yet it is as potentially dangerous
as an uninspected dam.
I see the shadow of a woman
coming across the tracks.
Her name might be Karen.
Remember myself saying, “Nice
meeting you. Hope you dispossess
your . . . yourself—” and her correcting me,
saying, “Selves,” and, “Thanks.”
Very rational. On second thought
her name might have been Karla
and the city might have been Santa Fe
or Savannah. Caught between foot trails
and foothills, it’s hard to say.
I’ve lived a long time
and made about as much impression
as an unremarkable polypod
on the rest of the hope-and-grope garden.
Karen? The train was coming.
Red light stuck on red.
What I have to say about Karen
can be said in my last days
half out of my mind on the sun porch
at midday midafternoon or midway of a game
of pool in the rest home.
She was kind, civil and kind—
and very rational. As sane
as any of us. Saner, underlined.
But will I live that long?
Surrounded by shady rock-walls,
spruce and sweet sedge
with a blue-eyed nurse—probably named Karen—
taking my pulse between her quick
cigarette-trips out by the whitewashed wall.
But most likely that other Karen will be
somewhere too, with her memories
of having slipped her enslaved
selves
off to places like Saginaw and Sacramento
releasing them, like little birds tossed up
set free to fly,
huff and puff, up
over the yucca and the yew,
beating their motorcycle wings—
crotch-rockets hit by a windstorm.
But don’t count on any of this
or the special symbols: emotional ports of entry,
lonely airports where she might be spotted,
telling her story to stranger
after stranger. Don’t count
on seeing her on a ferry crossing over
from the mainland to the island.
Or next to you on the train.
Like I say, the name might be the same
but the heartbeat is purely individual.