Green

KUDZU

For having eyes almost I thought

to congratulate myself. This was that

day’s little epiphany: the train

rucking out of tunneled

darkness back into the visible

world. But all the world was Alabama,

high above Sylacauga

and far from Gordo

and Tuscaloosa trying not to catch

fire. Pulled slowly up

with the bored and sleeping,

enclosed and muttering,

we were freight

for the foothills, the near mountains,

the plain height

to which we’d come

and no one seemed to see the green

wildness snaking

everywhere. To the glass

baked by August

I pressed my face

like a question—

an oiled mark would stay, would stain—

and everything

was kudzu

except the sky

which kept its distance, held back its rain.

I hardly wanted

to stop

or to later say

all this was beautiful—

no, I thought of the moon. Or the sea’s woven floor.

And these for a moment

only as another

tunnel took us in,

swallowed us up,

and in that hunger I kept my own.