this is what I thought of
when I thought about my sunny Vienna days:
sitting on a wooden bench in a train station
just sitting,
no tickets in my grubby hand.
I am again
entranced
by the cadence of everything:
the rickety tracks
the whistle
the clickclickclick of the suitcase’s wheels.
I am in love with the inky black and white page set before me;
I can see those faded watercolors,
all pastels and soft reds and blues and grays,
like the ones in my grandmother’s children books,
slightly worn.
and I watch the girl
-that girl-
who is waiting by the train
and I like the fact that she has a suitcase but no map,
whose crisp lines wouldn’t agree with watercolors.
I like the way she is standing
her chin straight ahead
twirling the fifth button on her jacket,
and I like the way she has sun in her eyes and toes in her boots.
I think she is the girl I would be
if I had tickets somewhere.
but then again,
I don’t,
so I go and sit in my marigold kitchen,
feeling the cool granite underneath my thighs,
and pour a cup of water from a pitcher I keep in the icebox
and write more poems
and think less about tickets,
because I suppose I punched mine on the way to Vienna anyway.