Inwood Knows
1.
Inwood knows
what it is to sleep
in a kill-zone, and
hear the trains scream
through the straggle
pines that we call
“The Woods”.
Inwood knows
the first snowflake
on a steel-sky day.
The empty fields,
the empty air, that
only moves around trains.
Inwood knows
that a town can be
pride like a chipped
cookie jar–blue
Dutchware–roughed
up from handling.
2.
Inwood knows
that beneath blue oxen
and blue clocktowers
and little blue houses—
you may find cookies,
or the ashes of a man
Inwood knows
who died and was burnt.
Who made too much ash
for his beer stein
and so rests in his
mother’s Dutchware.
Inwood knows
he chipped it with his
hunger for something
sweet and his clumsy
five-year-old hands.
The trains still move
Inwood knows.
