Truth of My Youth

TRAIN OF THOUGHTS

Somewhere south of Paris
a man with a beer belly
waves at the train,
his loose dog skips on the path,
he holds the brown leather leash with his other hand.
The train follows a canal for a little while,
a straight trench, man-dug at eye level
filled with quiet water that looks like jello,
flat and smooth.

Now it's summer
but it probably makes great ice to skate
in the winter,
my father used to tell me about how he played
on the canal close to our place when he was a kid.

I pay attention to the rattle of the train for an instant
as i put down a magazine
_____Tackatack-tacktack-tacktack...
the only music i hear,
the bass line to the music in head,
that and the air conditionning
that i muffled with my sweater.

Golden haystacks in the fields through the left window,
rolls that stick to the hills.
Truck parts in a yard through the right one
and the bare tracks that keep stretching
and sometimes distort in a turn
although firmly bolted to the ground.

The sun gently sets on France's countryside.
This is my soil that i'm gliding through,
but i feel nostalgia for America's water towers
absent from this moving picture,
that's going to reel for one more hour.
The sun has nothing to hit on its course.
I'm killing time with a four-color pen
throwing useless words on a dogeared train ticket.

The sunflowers are lined up like hopeful brothers,
I am alone in an eight seat compartment.