Who waits inside the station for
him to tuck the dark in?
The quiet ones, eyes soft with hopes of sleep
against the dimmed lights,
the heat from the stilled engine soaking out into night sky,
warming those asleep inside, caught there til dawn,
those businessmen, rocked and lulled by the commute home,
woken each morning by cold cheeks on glass windows,
the screech of metal on metal, a station waking
against the blue mountains a few miles east,
the tracks lit by sunrise, a first train
churning down its aisle, shattering quiet.
This morning: whose beginning is made of steel veins
running through the peaks, hugging Virginia together