This Offbeat Life
New Economy Cooking
Backpacking by Bus

Ethan Gilsdorf

Afternoon, Even Early Evening

We are riding into the heart
or is it brain of the Pyrénées,
potentially offending the Spaniards
and southwestern French around us
by removing our shoes and consuming
loud carrots in the interior clock
of darkness, afternoon even early evening
evading us, escaping into two holes
like nostrils or great eardrums
where the train has entered, despite
my frantic jabbering Isabelle
has swiftly fallen asleep, noiselessly
her eyes close into their oceans
and she journeys in reverse to 17,
11, eight, a tiny open six,
I can see each of these years
playing across her face still
Italian-tanned and content,
I sense my opening, she wears
my dusty and no longer immaculate jacket
as if I have always been her man,
and I sense the landscape of my caring
rise both green and brown around us,
mountainous and hardy, flat and fertile
where it counts, our feet interlaced
like the electric power-tangle of rail yards,
coupled trains humming to themselves,
mmmmmmmm.

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