Poem inspired by Claude Monet's "La Gare Saint-Lazare."
Corbot wrote, “Nothing has value except
in the hunger for them which seizes us.”
But sometimes the hunger is but vague yearning,
inarticulate as confused mist, obscure as
steaming plumes of smoke & suffocating
fog, overwhelming us with so much muchness.
Hunger competes with hunger. One train arrives
as another parts. I can’t get my head above
the clouds. On my tip-toes I rise
to meet your eyes. Yes, at last I am certain.
It must be you, both arriving &
departing, both the sharp spike taken to
the heart of perception, & the answering thrust
sent in every direction. Hear those churring
engines, unmistakable even in the dark, calling
for images instead of a muddle
of adjectives?