On the slide

I tell you I’m no longer certain
the train will arrive. Uncertain this is even
a station. That we should, in any way,
have consented to be stationary. Just a pulse ago
the descent, our lost spores breathed in
by the stairwell’s sharp inhale. And we settled. I fear
this is the lesson: No settling. Starked out plain
on the glass slide, edgelost and creeping,
we are a slew of softening; decoupled spine,
no wire of memory to hold taut the concrete
steps. Nothing stays solid with promise to raise us
back into sweet clear light.
My friend, listen: what comes rushing
from the darkness, a rat’s-gleam and no longer distant,
we both know it isn’t the train. The cavern
of the eye, it descends to the eyepiece, shining
undepthed and impossible as every night sky
we lay reeling beneath.
What travelled express in the chest,
briefly lifts us. Even now, anticipating a destination
of stars, how it will define us,
at last, to be seen.