And a Third Re-Working

I never ride the train back from Michigan without thinking of you and how you died—the lonely parking lot, your mouth, the gun, it’s something about repeating the journey, about the long trip back, after I had to identify your body in the morgue, a journey with hours for sorrow and regret: the golden light of dried grasses in the empty lots of Detroit, a kind of resurrection, the return of a city to wildlands, to meadow. At the top of a bare tree, a Cooper's hawk stares at military attention--a meal might yet be revealed. A bit later a dozen, two dozen deer bound across a field of last year's mown corn, flashing the arrows of their white tails, maidens fearful of the monstrosity on the tracks, but swans seen from the window of this train, the swans don't care, In inlets, in silvery pools at dusk, they are illegitimate sons of the nearly-full moon, come down to this world to sip from our waters, not the waters of forgetfulness, no these cold waters are opposite of that, and I remember a movie I saw in high school, maybe it was a movie I saw with you—the girl in the movie weeps as she says, I want to dance Juliet, I wanted to dance the role of the swan.