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into the tracks

after the first
death there is
no other,
after the first love
there

dark stains illness
like fine print under her
no one wanted to read.
In a hurry to leave her:
not believing my friend's wife
lay in such disarray there.
Coating sheets with sweat,
chanting to me
after the first god
there is no other, while
all along
distant railroad tracks held rails
the way memories preserve false youth
in a country of lies
civilization
can't trammel.
"Our lies glittering like polished fossils
in the night of some collective dreaming;
after the first lie there is no truth,"

lighting a cigarette off mine
she coughingly whispered
to the wall behind me.

Trains whistled mournful
warnings beyond the screen door
moths banged whirling flight paths into.
This was her suicide note:
unutterable blood-clots of smoke
veiling the 4 a.m. digital counter,
handed as burnt confetti later
to a sorrowing husband
whose fingers released their ash-wings
into the dawn expanding over us.
"THERE IS NO OTHER"
beyond the High Sierras into Bishop
where trains carry

lovers
into
infinity