Taos

American Poetry Review, The, May/Jun 2003 by Dubie, Norman

-January 3, 1943

You threw the red and white saddle blanket

into the black berth

and sat cross-legged for hours

in the sleeping car

of the mile long silver train to Los Angeles.

Snow over the fields of cactus was moonlight, you thought

walls of pinon and sandstone with liver spots

of raw orange and pitch

like that chunk of uranium you left on your aunt's

sewing machine the night before Easter.

Your cigarette flares against glass. You open

the thermos of brandy and hot chocolate:

a week ago now

your mother had died in her sleep

so you must remain awake

thinking the white rails of the mountain roadbed

are climbing vertically to the vanishing point

like some unwanted scream in the late winter night.

NORMAN DUBIE'S collected poems, The Mercy Seat, has been published by Copper Canyon Press. He has just finished a collection of lyrics called Ordinary Mornings of a Coliseum.