Tranquility

I.

Concrete safety walls, tattooed

in neon letters and caricatures, fall away.

The chatter of my peers

becomes background noise

like the clickety-clack of the DART;

I fix my gaze out this window

and hear the Gaelic announcements

for stops along the way.

How I wish I could speak this language.

Concrete safety walls, tattooed

in neon letters and caricatures, fall away.

The smokestacks of industry

and boxy corners of warehouse stores recede.

A sweep of sand arches out from the tracks.

the sea—the sea—stretches out before me,

slate-gray, wave-bobbed, surf-foamed.

Inlets; islands; a rocky seawall boasting a lighthouse.

The curve of a waning double rainbow

waxes, reaches out of the rain

to meet the water.

II.

Concrete safety walls, tattooed

in neon letters and caricatures, fall away.

The smokestacks of industry

and boxy corners of warehouse stores recede.

Lawns become yards, and yards,

fields fenced by hedge or rough-cut wood.

The chatter of my peers becomes background noise;

my gaze is riveted to mist,

stone farmhouses

puffing wood smoke into the cold morning,

to the abundance of grazing sheep

and rarer, dozing cows,

and a rarer-still horse cropping

at thick, January-green grass.

The concrete safety walls

have become walls of fieldstone,

directing this narrow, weaving road,

and they, too, fall away to natural ditches

worn into the roadside by the downpour.

I could stand in this rain for days.

The mountains—the mountains! whisk me away

to Keswick, and back to Vermont,

April-lush, or February-snowy.

I want to stop this bus

and lie down in the gorse and heather.

Through the condensate on the window,

I see peace.