Run for the Train

You run out the front door with the cup in your hand. Coffee over your knuckles, and you don't stop. The platform is at the end of the block. The clock says 5:06, the doors are closing, and the conductor sees you and puts his arm across the last one.

Thank you, you say, to his sleeve.

You sit. Across from you a man in a cap with the bill gone flat on one side is picking goatheads out of his sock into his palm. He does not look up. His compass lies open on the seat beside him. If you wrote down COMPASS, the word is stamped in the brass of the lid.

The train goes. A creek in a concrete channel with one egret standing in it. A solar field, every panel tipped the same way. Then the window is only the car, and you in it, and you sleep against the glass.

When you wake it is 3:10 and the train is standing at a platform with a bench and an ice house. A hand truck has been left stacked with bagged ice, and the top bag has split and run across the concrete.