inhaling to Dover

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Christmas Day. Inside the Hudson rail station, beautiful strains of classical guitar strummed very softly by a young man. I think of my beautiful friend in Finland who wishes to take it up, and how I've forgotten to tell him that I adore classical guitar. After the flurry of stress of trying to get out of the house with everything done, the music is extraordinarily tonic & soothing. The train arrives and I think I might thank the young man who I assume is going to New York along with the rest of us, but it seems that he's remaining in the station.

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On the train. Long frozen river, like riding alongside the back of a great gray whale.

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A collection of ghostly buildings - a house, a shed, a barn
in the woods above the river as the train races past
ancient clapboard shells stripped of paint and color
gray calcified walls meld against vapor sky
behind bare trees, the spectral apparitions
float above a matte rise of thick brown leaves
(lexicon: penumbral, tenebrous)

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around 12:30. A hawk flies along the riverbank just south of Yonkers, glimpses of Manhattan skyline in sight.

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1:11 p.m. On NJ Transit train, the conductor collects tickets.
A young woman seated behind me informs brightly, "I have to finish knitting this scarf before I get to Dover. I'll have to knit fast. I think I can do it!"

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Do you wear perfume?

I haven't for a long time
but feel that I would like to once again.

(the garden of your kisses...)

Ahhh!

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images:
Emily Dickinson's Herbarium, page __, c. 1844
Model Victorian conservatory, Maplewood, NJ, Dec. 2010
Andrew Wyeth, The Master Bedroom, c. 1965 (detail)
Display within model Victorian conservatory, Maplewood, NJ
Emily Dickinson's garden (recreation), NY Botanical Garden,
June 2010

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