Alan Michael Parker Stuck at a Crossing on a Bad Birthday in the Age of Diesel Passenger, tanker, potash and lumber, trains haul to their sidings, dreams I can't remember, the sketches God makes at night with an eraser. Older in the morning, I eat too much and miss more, suck my third coffee at a crossing while the radio does my thinking, the car off as the freight slides by. (I have slid by, piled high, over, over.) Atop the gate, a pair of red lights alternates, wait for me, die here, and in my temporary coffin I wait for me, the future never what it was. Grumble, mumble, grouse and swear: nothing but the body ages, adolescence everywhere. And love, my love, was it not here you cracked the car upon a railroad tie, bloodied the transmission flying home one Halloween, the poor little car that couldn't? It is I, I am the car, dumb to beauty, coffee doing nothing, my birthday stare right through my soul. Call me, yell at me, stop the silly war; the train will never end. I get out of the car: I stand there in the fumes of me and industry as the train goes by, and an engineer on the engine on the back waves until he disappears. Not the Gate of Heaven, the gate rises with a din, the clangor in me, as I drive on, past my life. about Alan Michael Parker