So here's another thing that's strange.
There's-- you know those magazines that have like
an airplanes and trains and stuff that are in--
like in the pocket, and you know?
For a while they had this magazine at Amtrak.
I don't know if they still do, it's
called The National, which is kind of like a hip name
for like a magazine for train.
Anyway, and they had this idea that they
were going to ask a poet each month to write
a poem for the magazine.
And they asked me to do it.
And being the literalist that I obviously am,
I wrote a poem about riding the train, which I did a lot when
I was a kid in the East Coast, up and down,
like between New York and DC, and Boston and DC.
So-- and I was thinking about how, like, there
are these moments in our civic life
that are these ritualistic moments of communion
that we don't really have names for, or acknowledge,
like, when we're all doing something together.
And like, one of those moments is like when we all
get on a train.
And it doesn't matter who you are,
where you're from, or whatever, everybody gets on a train,
and kind of does the same thing, and sits there
and there's this sort of silence there that's almost like sacred
before the train goes.
And I was just thinking about how it's strange
that there's this collective thing we
do that brings everyone together,
sort of outside of any other considerations of similarity
or difference.
So that was what I found myself writing about in this poem.
It's called "Poem for Passengers."
Like all strangers who temporarily
find themselves moving in the same direction
we look out the window
without really seeing or down at our phones
trying to catch the dying signal
then the famous lonesome whistle
so many singers have sung about
blows and our bodies shudder
soon we will pick up speed
and pass the abandoned factories
there has lately been so much conversation about
through broken windows they stare
asking us to decide
but we fall asleep next to each other
riding into the tunnel
sharing without knowing the same dream
in it we are carrying something
an empty casket somehow so heavy
only together can we carry it
over a bridge in the snow
emerging suddenly into the light
we wake and open our laptops
or a book about murder
or a glossy magazine
though we are mostly awake
part of us still goes on solving
problems so great they cannot be named
even once we have reached our destination
and disembark into whatever whether
for a long time there is a compartment
within us filled with analog silence
inside us the dream goes on and on