There are playing cards on the floor of the car of this over-romanticized train ride that will simply take me home.
We passed over the dirty river near my mother's hometown,
and a nameless man in a sad hat took my ticket.
The sentimental me wanted to ask him if I could please have it
to remember today
but the practical me stopped her
and wrote this poem instead.

This is a prayer
disguised as a poem –
a hope to G-d that I am on the right train

(A nameless commuter behind me
has unknowingly confirmed that this is,in fact, the right train.
I wish I could thank him.)

Now I can breathe, and wonder:
why does no one need the six of spades, or the two of hearts?

The two of hearts is the saddest card –
it is a reminder that every heart needs another
for the deck to be complete.

Is this solitude or loneliness?
Only a ghost shares my two-seater.
A ghost, and Howl.

I am not leaving behind, no,
only heading toward.

The dirty graffiti along the side of the tracks makes me wonder
about the artist's mother.

And if I look out far enough,
past the murky Jersey marshlands,
past the decrepit streets of Newark, home to Ginsberg,
past the prayer to G-d I'm on the right train,
past the rolling hills of some far-off county,
past the ports and abandoned storage warehouses with the windows broken in,
past the lumpy overcast sky –
If I look past all of the falling-down beauty along the NJ Transit rails,
I can see the sunset on some far-off horizon.

From here, it looks like a house fire.