Aerial Views of Trains
A camera seals the riverboat Emeline into this very afternoon.
Small white triangles all over the Hudson.
Clouds across the oilfield bounce up through many levels of sky.
As if today were a ferry made of light.
Some hills whip by green yes I suppose into the forgettable past.
Sensitized to the time of day. The glass house. The glass room.
Light gleams off the writing desk & here comes a sky so bright over the locomotives.
All this mourning eats your name down to wheatpaste & brick.
This afternoon contains an implicit argument. Unrecognizable face. Probably your
own.
An architectural theory nested in a doorway. Clear water in the glass.
The newest bridge stutters through a haze of memory.
Light gets caught descending your fire escape.
Newspapers blow along a beach.
All this daylight, all this noise. Sky beating on the riverfront.
I am and have been scuttled upshore almost past our field of vision.
Visual Economy
Through the factory on a wire while parts descend from a half-obscured assembly
line.
All the workers with their heads down at 14 frames per second.
Your unconcealed thingness.
In one kind of past, this was one kind of future.
You in a light coat, coughing steam.
Years later, you find every copper pipe has been stolen from the Job Corps site.
Material economy around the city fringe.
Then there was a field of remote-control airplanes, each one illegibly high.
Just the lights flickering as wind moans against the airshaft.
Hammering things of uncertain shape.
You are nervous as an elevated train.
The steeplechase and Ferris wheel dizzy us right into the ocean.
Author’s Note:
“These poems are from my manuscript, An Aperture, which is inspired by early-to-mid-20th century silent films. Each poem in the book combines material from several films — the linked image is one of the sources for ‘Aerial Views of Trains.'”
— MC Hyland
